AMN Reviews: Jozef van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch – American Landscapes (Incunabulum)

Relentlessly blasted with a fire hose of information, one must be forgiven for missing some essential news. Who knew that Jozef van Wissem, the world’s most interesting lutanist, and Jim Jarmusch, one of our most interesting Americans, have been releasing music together for years now? Not this guy. Fortunately, I found out just in time for their fifth, pretty terrific effort.

After a meet-cute in Manhattan in 2007, Jarmusch apparently immersed himself in van Wissem’s deep back catalogue and asked him to create the core theme to his latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive. The first two tracks on American Landscapes are named after towns in Jarmusch’s native Ohio and are appropriately Rust Belt-y. On “Cleveland” and “Akron” alike, Jarmusch lays a landscape of groaning, feedback-laden drones over which van Wissem dapples some light and dances a not-entirely-merry jig. 

The title track was commissioned by New York City’s Stephen Petronio Dance Company (which has a long history of collaborating with very interesting musicians) for a piece featuring artist Robert Longo’s visuals. “American Landscapes” unfolds in three expansive movements and, in keeping with its predecessors, is not fraught with the spirit of cultural grievance – which Longo’s cover photo from the Ferguson, Missouri protests might suggest – but is instead wistful, heavy-hearted in the face of the dreams and opportunities Americans have watched evaporate since 2016. Van Wissem’s palindromic lute and Jarmusch’s acoustic and electric guitars circle one another like wary interlocutors, who mean well but have a few hard questions to ask one another.

Stephen Fruitman