Timber

Add Bryan Rahija to the ranks of superb fingerstyle guitar pickers from the Piedmont region – Durham, North Carolina, to be precise. A founding member of the alt-folk-pop band Bombadil, Rahija cites legendary fellow North Carolinians singer Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller as influences, along with Fernando Sor, a virtuosic 18th-century guitarist and composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a 90-something-year-old Ethiopian nun who is renowned for her exceptional playing and technically challenging compositions.

In late 2019, newly transplanted to Portland, Rahija marked the beginning of COVID-induced self-isolation by borrowing an old dobro, ordering a new 12-string guitar and setting about the task of writing, performing and producing the dozen compositions on Timber. The resulting music is quietly compelling and deceptively simple. A deftly flowing melodic line running through ‘Nothing’s Fifty Fifty’ showcases Rahija’s technical agility on the 12-string, gliding above what sounds like a droning harmonium. On ‘Three-Legged Buddha’ he employs overdubbing to achieve expansive textural richness. ‘Itinerant Star’ evokes an ethereal soundscape by way of the guitar’s natural reverberation. Timber isn’t the sort of album that hits the listener over the head; instead, it soothes what ails the soul with a refreshing acoustic tonic.