It’s time, quite literally, for Stefan Christensen to come clean. Previous recordings by the denizen of New Haven, Conn., have beamed dimly at the listener from the far side of a bank of tape fog. At this point in the 21st century, when a Zoom digital recorder can be had for half the price of a used four-track machine, murk is an intentional strategy, not an artifact of circumstance, and Christensen is nothing if not intentional. Until now, he has used the resonance between his recordings and the best of 1990s lo-fi to generate sympathetic vibrations of emotion and aesthetics that have enabled his grimy guitar, skeletal beats and un-forward singing to articulate a recognizable outsider stance.

But on In Time, Christensen has dispelled the fog, if not the gloom. The LP was quickly but cleanly laid to tape by engineer John Miller, who has also done the job for Mountain Movers and Headroom. (Members of both New Haven groups comprise Christensen’s backing band on three of In Time’s four tracks.) This new clarity permits him to work with a broader dynamic than on previous records. When the stolidly strummed guitars pause on “84 Days,” you feel the silence. When they first circle around a ghostly organ, then accelerate straight out of the song at its end, you sense gravity’s vain tug. And when Christensen switches from rock band to layers of voice and jouhikko (an antique Finnish bowed lyre) on “Foreign Outlaw,” their rough textures will enfold and prickle you like an inherited wool blanket.

Still, an unbroken cord of somber sentiment connects In Time to Christensen’s other work. Even in good instrumental company, he still sounds like a solitary mourner doffing his cap at the enormity of human folly. [C/Site]

—Bill Meyer