James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg Release “Death Wishes to Kill” Off New Album, All Gist, Out April 12th
Photo by Joan Shelley.
James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg release “Death Wishes to Kill,” the second single off their forthcoming and third album of guitar duets, All Gist, out April 12th via Paradise of Bachelors. “Death Wishes to Kill” follows the release of the duo’s acoustic version of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance,”which “cleverly builds on the guitar licks that propel the original, and trades Cherry’s dance floor rhythm for a toe-tapping country swing” (WNYC’s New Sounds).The original duo compositions and arrangements on All Gist cover the waterfront of Chicago-based Elkington and Louisville-based Salsburg’s abiding interests. Many songs took several intense hours of tinkering, in varying degrees of frenzy, mostly for Nathan to carve sympathetic designs around the knotty edifice James had constructed. Others, like “Death Wishes to Kill” (a phrase lifted from a T.F. Powys novel the two had each recently read and loved), took its feverish shape in forty minutes full of shrieks and groans and hysterical laughs hard-stopped by James rushing out, late, to get his son from school. Amongst a group of stellar players providing assistance throughout All Gist, “Death Wishes to Kill” features a fiery solo from returning guest, Wanees Zarour, whose violin soars over and through the guitars with customary grace.
All Gist is out on April 12, 2024. Preview and pre-order below (all preorders include a download of the single).Read more about the album here.
“‘Death Wishes To Kill’ was the first song we wrote after an eight year lay-off. The original idea was Nathan’s and it came together surprisingly fast. The speed and ease with which it was written were the encouragements we needed to start making the album in the first place. When All Gist was finished it seemed fitting for this to be the first song, since here was where it started. Its title was drawn from a chapter in TS Powys’ novel Unclay, in which the character of Death descends upon a village to claim one of the inhabitants, but instead decides to become one of the villagers himself, having taken a shine to one of the local ladies. He then proceeds to make a proper nuisance of himself. Joining us are bassist Nick Macri on upright and general musical savant Wanees Zaroor, who contributes the woozily transcendent violin solo in the break. They contributed to our first two duo records, and we couldn’t make a third one without inviting them back.”– James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg
Acknowledgments
Their melody-first sensibilities are perfectly suited to each other … playfully complex guitar work that sounds as if it was tossed off in an afternoon of whiskey and laughs. – NPR“Buffalo Stance” especially showcases [Elkington and Salsburg’s] shared ability to listen so deeply to a song that it reveals its core, and their unique ability to communicate and express what they’ve discovered.— Aquarium Drunkard
James and Nathan have been busy since their last duo record.
Elkington recently released Me Neither, an album of his take on library music. He plays guitar with Jeff Tweedy, Brokeback, Eleventh Dream Day and beyond, and is a producer, working with the likes of Joan Shelley, Steve Gunn, Jake Xerxes Fussell and more. Salsburg is known for his own solo albums, most recently releasing the third album in his Landwerk series of compositions built around samples drawn from early 20th-century phonograph records, as well as recording and performing regularly with Joan Shelley, and his work as Curator for the Alan Lomax Archive.
