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Reviews

Steve Tibbetts — Close
(ECM 2858, 2025, CD)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-02-28

Close Cover art

It’s not hyperbole to say that Steve Tibbetts is a guitarist who sounds like no other. In a world full of guitarists who are more or less interchangeable, he’s been doing his own thing for decades. I don’t know exactly how he does it, but it seems to be a combination of his touch on the strings and how he uses feedback and a volume pedal. A remarkable aspect of this is that his playing on acoustic has the same characteristics — no one else bends strings quite the way he does. Close is his eleventh solo album, and it leans toward the more atmospheric side of his work. It’s not as quiet as Northern Song (1982) and it doesn’t have any of the more aggressive playing found on albums like Safe Journey (1984) or Exploded View (1986), but it has plenty to recommend it. Close features 20 tracks, though most of them are parts of suites that are split up for no clear reason, as they transition smoothly with no real change to the music. As on most Tibbetts albums, percussionist Marc Anderson provides a wide variety of sounds, often atmospheric, sometimes coalescing into rhythms. Resonant frame drums are often used to provide depth in the sparse arrangements while Tibbetts contributes one or more guitar parts (and a bit of piano). Mysterious reverberation fills the aural space, sounding at times as if the music had been played deep within a large cavern. Headphones help to bring the sonic world to life. Close may not be as immediately appealing as some of the previous Tibbetts releases, but it’s full of treasures that reveal themselves slowly on repeated listens.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Steve Tibbetts

 

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