Most listeners of Top 40 Christian rock and pop were first introduced to Ric Hordinski through his backing slot on Margaret Becker's Front Row Series live concert video. While the better portion of those who watched the video probably never saw nor heard from Hordinski again, those in the indie and alternative communities are well aware that the talented guitarist has been anything but dormant during the 14 years since the Front Row performance. After four critically hailed albums with the Cincinnati-based indie alt-pop outfit Over the Rhine, Hordinski left the group in late 1996 to form Monk with bassist and co-writer Brahn Sheray. Under the Monk namesake, Hordinski put out four studio projects and a Christmas effort before dropping the Monk label and releasing his latest effort, When I Consider How My Light Is Spent, under his own name.
Fans of Hordinski's layered, echo-laden guitar work will find more than a few points of reference on the new record. The album-opening "Any Second Now," is a stark, spacious guitar-and-percussion piece that sounds like something Phil Keaggy might have recorded for one of his instrumental albums. The follow-on cut, "Middle Way," is a similarly engaging slice of atmospheric, slightly jazz-tinged modern rock, while "Dover Beach" anchors Hordinski's characteristic atmospherics to a decidedly Beatlesque melody with superb results. On the other side of the coin, entries like "Ping" and "Come Gentle Night" eschew melodic content almost completely in favor of texture and ambience, a la the ethereal and meandering instrumental offerings of the Appleseed Cast's Low Level Owl releases.
While the Light record inarguably possesses an admirable sense of both subtlety and mood, the better portion of the record comes across as excessively subdued. To be sure, tracks like "River" and "If Angels," while not bad, per se, are nonetheless rendered largely nondescript by virtue of their lumbering tempos. Likewise, the overly muddy instrumental attribute of songs like "If Angels" robs them of much of their potential piquancy. To its credit, the Light project plays fairly well from start to finish as a single piece of music. And Hordinski's ability to coax such beautiful and sublime tones from his guitar only works to heighten the album's overall sense of cohesiveness. One can't help wishing, though, that he had laced his latest set of songs with just a tad more luster and verve.
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2004Reviewed by Chris MacIntoshThis latest release from the Cincinnati guitar wizard is the first recording under his own name and not under the Monk moniker. I have always enjoyed Ric's post Over The Rhine material but this album is without a doubt his best effort yet. The album opens with a haunting instrumental piece called "Any Second Now" and proceeds to go back and forth between instrumental and vocal pieces. The usual…Opus 2004Reviewed by Jason MoreheadI first became familiar with Ric Hordinski's music through his work as one of Over the Rhine's founding members. He played with that celebrated group for 8 years, and when you go back and listen to albums like Patience and songs such as "Jacksie," it's obvious that his subtle, yet atmospheric guitar work was just as fundamental to their music as Karin Bergquist's sultry voice or Linford…Similar sounding releases
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