The Fall Apartment
Tompkins Square

Guitarist Brad Barr finds himself exactly where he needs to be on The Fall Apartment, his extra-Slip debut: someplace quiet, removed from the job of making people dance. Removed, even, from the need to sing. With apparently effortless access to late night, kitchen table transcendence, Barr—true to his musichead roots—flirts with numerous approaches. On “Gin Gin,” a music box figure sways with ragtime elegance, as if from a pre-War 78. Earlier, Barr distills Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” into slow fragments, not so much an improvisation as a restatement. Experiments abound. Barr’s guitar reaches sitar-like bends (“Chopstick”), flickers over a rainstorm (“War”), or finds melody between fingerpicks (“Sarah Through the Wall”). Though Barr takes the abstraction slightly too far on “Do I Have to Understand That?” he mostly reclaims the intimate space The Slip departed some time ago. 

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