Derick Penrod - A Leaf Adrift (2022)

Derick Penrod - A Leaf Adrift (2022)

    A lot changes when you look at an art form as someone who creates things in that medium - there’s not much more I think beyond “ah, that looks cool” when I see a painting that catches my eye. Maybe it evokes a feeling in me, and a particularly well done one will inspire me, but I never find myself wondering about the brush strokes or the color theory behind a visual masterpiece. This changes completely when it comes to music, however, and one of the first things I tend to think about on my first listen of an album is how the musicians conjured up the sounds put to tape or digital or what have you. One album recently that has still kept my head freshly scratched on multiple relistens is the latest release from San Antonio native Derick Penrod - A Leaf Adrift. Sitting firmly within some multidimensional genre Venn diagram of ambient, post rock, and folk, the album is pretty symmetrically constructed, with each half of the album consisting of a longer track followed by a shorter track, almost serving as an epilogue to the main dish of each side.

    Drawing the title from the idea of a bunch of millenia old musicians coming together after eons apart to jam once again, opener and lead single “The Great Reconvening” portrays what it intends to to great effect. Building off a single acoustic guitar groove, the first third of this herculean 15 minute track grows gradually as more and more instruments reconvene. Claps and stamps, banjos, electric guitars, bass, and Hammond organ all jump into the fold as the music swells and breathes like one massive beast lost to a time that we have no way of knowing about. At times, large chunks of the whole that the instruments create will fracture from one another, shifting and drifting apart as dissonances bring the tension to a boiling point. Then, the music takes one moment for time to suspend as sustained unison notes soar around the listener, showing the space that was just filled by a wall of instruments and allowing the music to move around within it. Another groove grows out of the seeds of the first, this time more welcoming in character, and takes a moment to shine a spotlight on the Hammond organ work by Nick Kemp. After some time, this section passes too, as a digital sea takes the musicians away, leaving as mysteriously as they arrived. Echoes of the reconvening are heard throughout the land, and one echo is heard to close off the journey of this track, sounding one last hurrah before moving on.

    Off the heels of the opener, title track “A Leaf Adrift” brings a calmer moment of reprieve to the table. No note is out of place or unanticipated, no attack too loud or too sudden, and no texture too dry and barren. It is somewhat ironic to call a piece of music - an art form that relies so much on time and duration - timeless, but had I not looked at the track times prior my ears could have easily fooled my brain into thinking this was just as long, and not a single second would have been wasted. If the previous track was like earth, this one flows like water - both important on their own, but when they’re placed together, life and true beauty are formed.

    If the end of “The Great Reconvening” is one last echo from the titans heard from above, the beginning of “We’ve All Got Boltzmann Brains” is a far more sinister transmission from the same place. More acoustic guitars enter gradually, but rather than one shared groove they all creak and patter along, as if imitating the drawbridge lowering for the knight running at the castle. More of a streamlined climb to the end than the segmented opener, this track brings the inevitable destruction that would follow the creation portrayed in the opener. At times, it feels like the music, along with your headphones and reality, could disintegrate as noise and tape fatigue envelop what remains of the music. The rumblings of a planet imploding in on itself give way, as only the high wails that opened the track remain, leading us into…

…the most normal moment on the album. An incredibly normal moment, at that. “A Once Fluorescent Photograph On a Wall Without a Frame” features just Derick’s vocals alongside acoustic guitar, and serves as what could be seen as an epilogue to the events of the album. And after everything that transpired prior, the earnestness and stripped back sound is a welcome shift. The whole album experience is unreal, but to have both an ascendant experience and a track I can just throw in a playlist on the same album while still keeping it cohesive is an impressive feat. It’s hard to pick favorites on an album like this, but I can easily see this track being the one I come back to the most outside of the context of the full album.

    There’s a lot of words you could ascribe to the sound Derick pulls together on this project; monumental, massive, megalithic, meritorious, the list could go on. But to put it into a single word that only starts with the letter M if you want it to - A Leaf Adrift is amazing. I’m lucky to have been able to call Derick my good friend over the past 5 years, and watching him grow as a musician over this time has been equally rewarding. 5 years ago, I never could have thought that this album would exist, but looking back now, an album of this caliber being a stop in a musical journey that has many more stops on the horizon is a no brainer. Sure, my biases may be showing strong, but I would highly recommend this album nonetheless. If you love it, you’ve got a new album to revisit time and time again, as this is one sure to reveal more of what makes it great as time passes. And if you think of it as any less than great, you’ve at least heard an album that is nothing like you’ve ever heard before. (Unless you are Derick, in which case, you’ve probably heard this album many, many, many times)