Every now and then some LP, CD, or cassette makes its way into my hands and gets played one or two times, and then it mysteriously migrates toward one of several storage areas in my apartment. What with the steady gush of new music arriving weekly, it’s often hard to keep a steady eye on any gems coming in, even despite the hype surrounding the artist or release. This week I was fortunate enough to feel like doing a ‘Cleveland dig’, pulling out a bunch of Wagon-related and otherwise Cleveland-associated artists. In the pull was Mark McGuire’s “A Pocket Full of Rain” double-cassette set. This release is comprised of a c20 (accounting for sides A & B) and a c30 (sides C & D). No stranger to McGuire’s work, and definitely a fan of any well-applied delay pedal, images of rainy streets and dripping bicycle pads started forming in my mind.

The A side is just one track, “Forecast”. It opens with a steady rhythm, sounding almost like McGuire hit record several minutes after he started this cozy little jam, thus leaving any build-up to this energy off the reel. Even though the track seems to start off well into the jam, there are plenty of checkpoints yet to visit before we meet the 10-minute mark. The mood is not blatantly jovial, but maybe about as pleasant as we can get on a rainy day. It feels like maybe I’m studying my face in a drizzled puddle as McGuire seamlessly moves between different iterations on the guitar, eventually dissolving that introductory rhythm, leaving us in a wake of twinkling notes located somewhere closer to the bridge of the guitar.

Flipping the first tape brings us to “The Marfa Lights”. This one enters with just a lone guitar loop, and shortly after its beginning, another guitar enters. McGuire plays a few bars, layers, then loops, masterfully keeping with his initial tempo. This track is decidedly more somber, even though it opens with a steady shimmer. Eventually a unique electric voice enters the track, drenched in overdrive and swirling phaser. The palm-muting eventually fades into the cloudy distance and we are surrounded by loops built on sustained riffs, moving round and round about the plain. It’s apropos that this piece is named after a strange light phenomenon, because I can now easily see this music being the soundtrack for a 1980’s movie scene in which the gang of kids race their BMXs along the ridge, dark silhouettes standing out starkly along the ridge, and mysterious light creeping onto the scene from behind. Ghostly indeed.

The track “A Pocket Full of Rain”, interestingly the shortest track on this album (at just under two minutes), leads off side C. It’s hard to believe these mystical tones circling about are made by an electric guitar—they sound more like effected sine waves. The track is nonetheless enchanting in its ephemeral imprint upon this album. Sandwiched between the title track and another brief C-side bookend is the 10-minute jam “Radio Flyer”. This one is an unabashedly bright, first building upon itself into a frenzy of high-pitched notes, and then dissolving into more muted beauty. All the while, McGuire rarely returns to the exact same riff, always shifting his song into some new take on that same set of five or ten notes. Sometimes it seems he’s just walking up and down a scale, but the rhythm and repetition are what dominate, filling the room—and you’d never guess any of the composition could be anything near simple. And wouldn’t you know it—that other brief bookend is another little nugget. Sustained guitar notes swell up into a cloud, from which muted chirps bounce back and forth in my stereo pan. Meditative and somber, if I’ve ever heard it.

The last side of this set opens with what is probably my least favorite track on this release. It’s called “Aqueduct”—and for some reason it’s just missing something. Hell, maybe McGuire is using a synth module on some of these tracks (some of the sounds are simply other-worldly, and imagining them coming from a guitar is a bit hard to do…). “Aqueduct” does sound a bit synthy in its slow-moving three minutes. It closes with some clearly plucked guitar, which albeit is wonderfully-done as always from Mr. McGuire, but for some reason I’m thinking, “Why not just do more of that?”, I know—a ridiculous request, and I’m prying into the artist’s creative realm, a rude thing to do. I apologize. Onward, the album closes with “Sick Chemistry”, also the longest piece in attendance. This one opens with more vague riffs, swells of tone (either synth or guitar—at this point I’ll believe anything), and somewhere in the distance I think I hear a bit of resolution swirling. This isn’t altogether formless, but after such a beautiful trip into realms of previously unknown poly-rhythms, I am feeling unfulfilled by this lack of rhythmic definition. I keep waiting for this one to morph into an amazing cycle of plucked notes, but it never happens. The album closes with a slowly-turning, sleepy-time mood. Maybe we’re just home from our walk in the rain and it’s time for that afternoon nap with the cat.

Undoubtedly, “A Pocket Full of Rain” is a must for fans of McGuire. I’ve heard a fair amount of his other solo work and I think this one is damn near definitive. I’d never have thought solo guitar work could be so inviting or so mystifying (and often both at the same time!). This has been re-issued in CDR format, with additional (or extended?) tracks, but copies of that are limited as well and stock appears to be dwindling everywhere. The double-cassette format does seem a bit impractical, since obviously we’re looking at roughly 50 minutes of music that could have easily fit onto a single c50, but I suppose we don’t need to address the trend toward utilizing the ‘set’ gimmick in cassette labels today. Whatever the format, “A Pocket Full of Rain” is a gem that I’ve been ignoring for too long. True, it has a few spots that are slightly less luminous, but overall I see this one only increasing in value. 8/10 -- Michael Jantz (8 September, 2009)