John Fahey, America (side A)

John Fahey's style has become something of a reproducible idiom.  Many solo guitarists now create intricate, technically adroit acoustic guitar playing with a prominent American folk/blues influence in long, abstract, and slowly-evolving compositions.  It seems surprising in retrospect that few of Fahey's albums neatly fit this idiom.  After slowly stretching the concise forms of his early works, he branched far out of his usual element for 1968's Requia—his most daring and surprising album integrates tapes and found sounds.  Only four years later, he sought more commercial success with Of Rivers and Religions.  Only the classics in between, The Yellow Princess and America, follow the style closely associated with Fahey.  He had not totally abandoned technological experiments here.  "The Waltz That Carried Us Away and Then a Mosquito Came and Ate Up My Sweetheart" features prominent tape delay.  The 1998 reissue hides this creative anomaly by burying it after 70 minutes of guitar—the now idealized idiom of Fahey's work is uninterrupted by this oddity.  The impressive packaging of America contains a comic glued inside the album.