Dean McPhee, “Northern Earth” (Bass Ritual, 2026)
This sixth album from English slow-motion guitar magician Dean McPhee is something of a major creative leap forward, as he has newly expanded his arsenal of gear to now include a “powerful 18-inch subwoofer” and a wooden snare percussion pedal. While such a modest expansion would likely be a complete non-event for most artists, it is a massive development for McPhee, as his overdub-free real-time minimalism is now enhanced with an impressively solid approximation of a Jamaican dub-style rhythm section. In short, Dean McPhee is now a proper one-man band. Unsurprisingly, that enhanced palette unlocks a whole new world of rhythmic and dynamic possibilities that McPhee puts to especially inspired use in the titular side-long closing epic yet this whole release is remarkably strong, as it feels like a great single backed with a fine pair of languorously psychedelic zone-outs.
The opening “Indica Fields” captures McPhee at his most lean and focused, as he manages to condense all of his usual epic tropes into a mere 5 minutes of simmering slow-motion folk/desert blues. Aside from the winding and circular melodic hook at its heart, “Indica Fields” is most notable for the echoing decay of the wooden snare and its looping bass line, which is the first of the album’s many nods to McPhee’s dub inspirations. For me, however, the crucial difference between a great Dean McPhee piece and a merely good Dean McPhee piece is whether or not I am blindsided by some kind of showstopping transition or dazzling effects pedal showcase. As it turns out, “Indica Fields” boasts two such passages, as one solo feels like a skyful of streaking comets, while another beautifully segues from backwards melodies to shimmering washes of rippling arpeggios.
The following “Appleby Fair” is considerably more somber and spidery, as it is centered on a repeating minor key arpeggio motif. Like its predecessor, it also features a killer finale of shimmering wave-like guitar magic, but I was actually far more impressed with the intricacies of both its composition and McPhee’s performance, as he elegantly and seamlessly transitions between different sections with subtle additions and subtractions of loops. My favorite one of those fluid transitions comes when a serpentine lead guitar melody unexpectedly becomes the backdrop to the next passage, but there are a host of other more nuanced pleasures lurking throughout the piece as well.
At the moment, however, I am most entranced by the endlessly shape-shifting 18-minute title piece, which starts off as a kind of lurching and spidery reggae/blues groove with an appropriately twangy and bluesy solo, yet quickly becomes something way cooler once a winding Middle Eastern melody comes in to steal the focus. As a fresh bass line helpfully appears to propel that new melody forward, it fleetingly feels like a killer Om song is about to erupt (if Om had a guitarist, anyway) before McPhee instead settles into another quietly smoldering desert blues reverie. After a couple of other cool stretches that resemble the minimalist post-rock deconstructions of Radian and the beginnings of a great slow-building Midwestern Emo guitar eruption, McPhee then pulls his final and greatest stylistic rabbit from his hat and unleashes a stark and simmering bass and snare groove that gradually blossoms into an absolutely killer spacey solo of fluttering wah-wah guitar.
By my count, that adds up to three hits in a row, which makes Northern Earth a strong contender for McPhee’s finest album to date. My only real critique is that its more transcendent moments tend to be painfully ephemeral, but I suppose that only makes them more precious and beautiful while they last. Moreover, I am not sure that I would actually prefer the alternative, as McPhee’s greatest and most eternal virtue is his intuitive genius for nuance, understatement, and slow-burning dynamics, which consistently makes the journey every bit as compelling as the eventual payoff.
Listen here.
