Jessica Ackerley: Morning / mourning
Cacophonous Revival Recordings

No format is more exposing than the solo recording. In featuring her guitar sans accompaniment, Jessica Ackerley's Morning / mourning is naturally intimate, and bolstering that impression is the recording methodology used to capture its nine pieces. She recorded the material after Christmas 2020 at a friend's vacated apartment, where she'd decamped for a stint of COVID-related self-isolation. To avoid upsetting the neighbours, she used a condenser mic to record her hollow-body electric, as well as other strategies to minimize the volume her playing would normally generate. Adding to her state-of-mind, the recording documents Ackerley's artistic expression following the passing of two guitar mentors, Vic Juris and Bobby Cairns, the latter on account of COVID-19. All such circumstances came into play as she laid the tracks down.

However much one might expect the recording (available in download, cassette, and CD formats) to be bleak and despairing in light of the losses Ackerley experienced and the general shroud of pandemic gloom that has enveloped us since spring 2020, Morning / mourning isn't grief-stricken—though it's hardly a joyfest either. Something of a middle ground is struck in explorations that are ponderous, brooding, and by their nature inward-looking. The home-styled setup and live, unadorned feel allows listeners to imagine they're in the same space with the guitarist and witnessing every creative decision as it happens. One imagines an equally good alternate album title would have been Solitude.

Stylistically, Morning / mourning transcends idiom. It's not a jazz guitar recording, even if it's possible to identify elements relating to it; vestiges of rock guitar are present too, though Ackerley never lapses into high-decibel riffing. She draws on abilities honed through the years the Alberta-born guitarist lived in New York City, where she played at places such as The Stone and The Blue Note, and the ten-plus recordings she's appeared on as both leader and collaborator. Ackerley's as comfortable working within formal compositional structures as improvising solo.

The idiosyncratic character of her approach is evident early on when she obsessively worries over a set of motifs in “Henry,” the result a beehive of interlaced fragments. Lyrical by comparison is “Inner Automation,” which she elevates with patience and sensitivity. There are moments where she uses the technical facility she's developed over the years to achieve specific ends (see “Conviction” and the even more dexterous “Coaxial II”), but Morning / mourning is hardly an exercise in ego-stroking. Whatever moves she makes within a piece are done with its larger purpose and overall shape in mind.

At its spikiest, her playing suggests Derek Bailey as a kindred spirit, and like him Ackerley isn't afraid to blur the divisions between consonance and dissonance. She also isn't afraid, however, to work a peaceful mediation such as “Morning” in amongst the livelier settings. Enhancing the personal character of the project is the album's cover artwork, which the guitarist created. While it neither exudes an air of resignation nor celebration, Morning / mourning ultimately feels quietly triumphant, even if just for the simple fact of its existence (it's perhaps telling, for instance, that the tone of “mourning” isn't downtrodden but rather energized and defiant). That it does would seem to testify to the will of its creator to stay the course and keep moving forward.

June 2021