Don’t be turned off by the garish cover painting of a rather disturbed-looking young male in a cowboy hat standing in front of a vehicle swallowedup in flames. The 7 acoustic guitar–driven instrumentals on Texas Panhandle native Hayden Pedigo’s mostcurrent album, The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored, are for the most part mild, pastoral pieces that to me stimulate attractive outside landscapes and calm psychic areas; not any sort of darkness or angst. It’s absolutely Pedigo’s most “normal” album, and I mean that just favorably: If you’ve heard other records he’s made over the past years, you understand that he likes to sometimes experiment with soundscapes and ambient environments that can variety from progressive sound to ghostly cleans and odd textural options that are typically in plain contrast to the divinely meaningful fingerpicking that is his bread and butter. It insomecases makes for a rather disjointed listening experience.
On The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored that weirdness hasactually been called back, yet there are still plenty of innovative, tonally proper sonic and critical touches throughout that raise what feels like a solo acoustic guitar album to something more extensive—Luke Schneider’s far-off, weeping pedal steel; really subtle bass on a couple of tracks from Robert Edmondson and manufacturer/mixer/arranger Trayer Tryon (who likewise includes some hardly noticeable sy