The way Joanna Newsom tells it, Ryan Francesconi had a critical role to play in “Have One On Me”: not just as chief arranger and player of the Bulgarian tambura, kaval, mandolin, banjo, recorder and so on, but also (along with drummer Neal Morgan) in steering her towards making “Have One On Me” a triple CD set. It’s a bit of a surprise, then, to find Francesconi’s own album doesn’t reflect such extravagance. Instead, “Parables” packs eight pieces into just over half an hour, and consists entirely of Francesconi working away on nothing more exotic than an acoustic guitar. The results, though, sound less like a paring back of Francesconi’s ambition, and more like an intense concentration of it. When the title track begins “Parables”, there are flurries of guitar that suggest – like Newsom – this Portland, Oregon musician has closely studied Malian kora music. In the accompanying notes, Newsom confirms as much and calls “Parables” “an ecstatic and measured reconciliation of West African/Balkan/Baroque/bluegrass influences, which ultimately resembles nothing I know.” I can’t pretend to know much – well, anything – about the “Bulgarian folk technique” that Newsom also mentions. One of the striking things about “Parables”, though, is how – that bluegrass allusion notwithstanding – it feels distinctly apart from American folk music. While many of Francesconi’s guitar soloist contemporaries begin their trajectories in the New American Primitive tradition, then often head off into transcendental raga territory, he seems to be following a different path. The one of those contemporaries that he faintly resembles might be James Blackshaw, in particular his duets with the baroque lute player Jozef Van Wissem in Brethren Of The Free Spirit. I think it’s a certain classical bent, a courtly serenity, a barely discernible medievalism that also, on the likes of “Pravo”, also reminds me of some John Renbourn solo albums. I suspect I’ve talked about this before when discussing James Blackshaw, but for a non-musician like myself, it can be tricky identifying the strengths of a record like “Parables” without tending towards a rather woolly, nebulous way of writing about music. Suffice to say, perhaps, that it’s quite lovely; that it has an appealingly contemplative air throughout, as if Francesconi can project an air of calm through his music even in the midst of fiendish technical complexity; and that the album it reminds me of most is Toumani Diabaté’s “Mande Variations”, which ranks as pretty high praise.

Looks like we’re heading deep into 2011 releases now, and this latest by Arbouretum, slated for January, is a really good one. If you’ve not latched on to this distinctly underrated Baltimore band, there’s a bit of catching-up available here: a piece on their last album, “Song Of The Pearl”; a live review from 2009’s blinding Club Uncut show; and something about Dave Heumann’s recent side-project, Coil Sea. Since that 2009 tour finished, Heumann has fiddled with Arbouretum’s lineup, and it initially looks like bad news that Steve Strohmeier – crudely, Richard Lloyd to Heumann’s Verlaine – has departed the ranks, to be replaced by a keyboards player. As it turns out, though, “The Gathering” is if anything heavier than previous Arbouretum records. The familiar influences I’ve logged before are all present and correct; Heumann’s debt to the serpentine intricacies of Richard Thompson’s songwriting is more pronounced than ever. This time, though, it comes with an extra heft that someone here described as stoner folk-rock. Consequently, when the opening “White Bird” thunders in, it sounds very much as if the martial rhythm section of Corey Allender and JV Brian Carey have been channelling something like Om. The tonal range of the whole album feels pleasingly narrow and focused; it drives on in this linear, psychedelic fashion, remorselessly. Soon enough, Heumann is cutting loose with one of his sensational solos, but he always keeps within the tight parameters of the song: this is a jam as a precision trip, not a freeform self-indulgence (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with those, of course). “The Gathering” goes on like this, with a pummelling sense of purpose, even when Arbouretum slow down on “When Delivery Comes” or Jimmy Webb’s fantasy on the theme of mythic archetypes, “The Highwayman”. The press notes say the album’s inspired by Jung, by the way, which may be significant here. By the end, they clock up the ten-minute “Song Of The Nile”, which sounds like perhaps the best thing Arbouretum have ever recorded; a low-slung and blasted psych throbber that, when it gets rolling, features Heumann playing – and I suspect he won’t be over-enamoured with the comparison, but it’s meant well – in a way which reminds me of Josh Homme, circa Kyuss, perhaps. The insistent drone pulse reminds me, too, of bands I hadn’t previously seen as such obvious fellow travellers: Wooden Shjips and Endless Boogie, especially the latter’s similarly climactic “A Life Worth Leaving”. I read recently of a New York show where Arbouretum, with Hans Chew guesting on keys, jammed on “Sister Ray” for an hour, before being replaced by Endless Boogie, who kept it rolling for another hour, more or less. Anyone see this, by any chance?

Among the many tales about Ariel Pink, there’s one, possibly apocryphal, about a live show where he came onstage and did nothing but intone the word “Xanax” for the duration of the gig. It’s slightly worrying, then, when he emerges out of the leftover Halloween dry ice at this Club Uncut show to solemnly pronounce “Carrots”, then disappears again. Pink, of course, has several reputations: as a prodigious LA singer-songwriter, finally escaped from his bedroom; as the elfin godfather of chillwave, hypnagogic pop and several other nebulous genres that hazily misremember ‘80s FM radio hits; and as a somewhat unpredictable live performer. As he studiously eats what I assume to be a carrot, it looks like this one could go either way. Suddenly, though, the Haunted Graffiti are surging through the harmonious garage chestnut, “Bright Lit Blue Skies”, with a kind of intense, high-pitched slickness, and Pink – a frail and theatrically agitated man who resembles, from this distance, a glam-rock Kurt Cobain – is keeping up just fine. In fact, what’s most surprising about this terrific show is how accurately Pink and his quartet of experienced Silverlake scenesters can reproduce the weird, insidious pop of “Before Today”; the precision and gloss, the prog intricacies, the lushly deranged falsetto harmonies, and the amniotic effects that drench Pink’s vocal leads. If anything, the likes of “L’Estat” are even more effective live, given a spectacle and bombast that seems odd from such a lo-fi maven like Pink, but is actually totally suitable to his vision: even when, at the end of the song, his girlfriend Geneva Jacuzzi arrives onstage, dressed as a trick-or-treating Marcel Marceau, for some interpretive dancing that she appears to have learned entirely from old Kate Bush videos. Later, Pink wheels out his own Bush homage, “For Kate I Wait”, one of a bunch of old songs that the band manage to carry off with a faithfulness to the unsteady original versions, but with a professional efficiency, too. It’s a neat trick – as, of course, is the old one of a flakey frontman employing a band of reliable artisans as backup. Haunted Graffiti, in their matching band t-shirts, seem to have helped shift Pink towards the mainstream he obviously craves, but without sacrificing any of his psychedelic nuances. The “Before Today” songs are the biggest winners in this, so that “Round And Round” comes out of the blender as a weirdly forlorn anthem for 2010, complete with a cappella five-part harmony breaks. I’m sure I racked up a load of references in my original review of “Before Today”, but a few more spring to mind tonight: Cheap Trick, a lot of Bowie, “Midnite Vultures”-era Beck, Mike Post & Larry Carlton (on “Can’t Hear My Eyes”); and, on the brilliant final double whammy of “Butthouse Blondie” and “Little Wig”, Blue Oyster Cult. If there’s one act the whole production reminds me of, though, it’s a substantially less successful one. Bobby Conn might not have the same quality of songs as Pink, and his place in the underground is far less close to the surface. Nevertheless, in the mixture of FM staples and avant sensibilities, facepaint, theatre, self-conscious otherness and an imperative to blur the boundaries between trad rock abandon and performance art, the two have a lot in common. And here’s an email this morning that says Haunted Graffiti are going on tour in the States later this week with Os Mutantes. Let me know if any of you catch that.