![]() ![]() Ribot started by helping Tom Waits redefine himself as a clangorous visionary in the ’80s and has cut a vast swath across art and pop music since. It’s no slight to Jarmusch and Carter that the guitar playing gets considerably more interesting when Marc Ribot shows up, as he’s one of the most distinctive, widely traveled American guitarists of his generation. This leads into a guest-laden middle run that shows off Jarmusch’s knack for casting as the focus tightens on the romance of 20th-century New York. On “The End of the World,” the riff is a podium at which Jarmusch, in a pleasing baritone reminiscent of John Cale, recites a postapocalyptic short story about “an older man, approaching 70” who watches “feral teenagers” doing donuts and dancing to sad pop in the concrete plaza below the prison of his apartment. ![]() ![]() ![]() “Berlin ’87” uses Super 8 footage from Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall to coat a standard mood-setter-overtone-capped drone rock in the manner of Boris and Earth, both prior collaborators of producer Randall Dunn-with Cold War-era grit. Silver Haze is SQÜRL’s first album outside of cinema, yet it still feels tightly scripted, especially on “She Don’t Wanna Talk About It,” where Jarmusch and the British-German singer Anika talk past each other in a long, dark corridor of guitar. ![]()
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