Multicolored Midnight

The 2022 album by guitar-bass-drums collective Thumbscrew, featuring Mary Halvorson, Michael Formanek, and Tomas Fujiwara is “just” a collection of new pieces (five by Formanek, three each by Halvorson and Fujiwara), but over the course of their decade-plus existence they’ve developed such a strong identity that there’s a real comfort in hearing them settle into position. And they do still manage to bring new ideas to the table; Formanek’s “Shit Changes” finds Halvorson playing with an effect that makes her guitar sound like it’s coming through a bad phone connection, full of echo and dropouts, while Fujiwara switches from drums to vibraphone, as the bassist slaps through the middle like he’s hacking through the music with a machete. The title track, written by Halvorson, has an almost psychedelic feel; her guitar lines meander all over, only periodically returning home to lock in with the bass and drums. Fujiwara’s “Future Reruns and Nostalgia” is the longest piece on the record, one of his patented near-ambient soundscapes, full of shimmer and drone and melancholy.