Sometimes, having nothing to lose offers the biggest gains. This sentiment is true for Liverpudlian guitarist Matthew McPartlan, whose debut album of wandering solo acoustic guitar work, Summer Nights and Still Water, manifested after an 18-month hiatus from music. According to the artist, this resulted from "a number of failed projects and total lack of confidence in my ability." Perhaps McPartlan, who now goes under the moniker M.Haiux, is just being humble. After all, he was a member of Cranebuilders, once described as "the most important unsigned band in Britain" by Elbow's Guy Garvey, so musical success hasn't completely evaded him. Still, being a member of a band that got hype 20 years ago isn't quite enough to keep our delicate social status tracking system in check. So McPartlan, like many musicians being swept away by the waves of time, found an effective method for overcoming his sense of failure; opinions be damned! "When I picked up the guitar again, I was only interested in creating sounds and songs that pleased me," writes McPartlan. It sounds contradictory, but this indifference towards likability has yielded an album of lovable and straightforward music—40-plus minutes of acoustic guitar played with emotional inquisitiveness and crystalline dynamics.
Much of the album's mood, theme, and titles were influenced by the 1894 novel Pan by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun. That novel details the life of a hunter who lives with his dog, Aesop, in a hut in a remote forest. The hunter falls in love with a woman from a nearby town, but their attraction to each other is complicated by their disparate worlds; his one nature and hers one of culture. M.Haiux communicates these feelings of outsiderism and the power of nature on our contemplative states through 11 pieces that stand apart from the mould, neither twisting to cheap thrills nor turning to the esoteric.
"Weirdo" is one track on Summer Nights and Still Water that exemplifies the romantically bittersweet aspect of social isolation. Its compounded melody hits dark shades, and McPartlan is uninterested in catharsis, allowing the questions posed by his searching guitar lines to go unanswered, like a telephone ringing out in an empty house—the tones and rhythms of which are enjoyed exclusively by the ghosts left behind. It’s a song that M.Haiux has only played once—the recording presented here. Indeed, this album is both structured and improvisational, performed and recorded in May 2024 in a bedroom in South Liverpool.
This primitive approach recalls the work of John Fahey, Bill Callahan, and Cian Nugent, artists who lean into the acoustic guitar's ability to rattle off bright melodies while also emphasizing the space between the notes with rich tonal sustain. This is especially true of tracks like "Oak Beck Stomp" and "The Wild Reality," which sound like they were composed in an empty carriage of a freight train by someone who owns only a bindle and their guitar. McPartlan teases coffee-house accessibility on numbers like "Slippery Slope (Parts I & II)" and "Some Of The Feathers" with their rustic aesthetic, though these numbers invariably flow towards capricious and stacked moods.
Meanwhile, the opening number, "Trusting Aesop," is seven minutes of intense pensiveness, with McPartlan finding small pockets of prettiness among his more beseeching expansiveness. More serene moments come during "The Two Boats Lay Ready" and "A Secret Stillness", ambient attempts that have no problem coming to a complete standstill midway through their light jaunts.
Summer Nights and Still Water by M.Haiux demonstrates how much you can do with a little. With only an acoustic guitar, confident nonchalance, and a head full of Norwegian fiction, McPartlan sculpts welcoming and pleasant soundscapes unassumingly loaded with emotional weight. The improvisational feel of most tracks creates a playful environment for the listener, allowing them to explore alongside the artist.
★★★★