I’d heard really good things in advance about Winter Pick and I’m pleased to say it’s more impressive and even more diverse than what I expected. Singer–songwriter and guitar picker Justin Bernasconi is normally a member of country-leaning local outfit, The Stillsons. Bernasconi has released a couple of albums with The Stillsons, but over the last two years he has been developing his considerable acoustic finger picking chops for Winter Pick, a mostly instrumental album. Local guitar maestro Jeff Lang has done an outstanding production job capturing every nuance of the deep bass notes, sparkling harmonics and rich chords of the unusual and vintage instruments. The opener, ‘Winter Pick’, is an impressionistic piece and an impressive highlight for me, while ‘Sirmione’ follows a more unusual path with violins, cellos and viola. Bernasconi has mastered the American school of finger-picked guitar, with echoes of a Doc Watson-style song accompaniment, breakdowns and acoustic country blues, and also elements of the English folk–baroque genre. Jeff Lang and Pete Fidler contribute some very fine dobro and slide guitar, particularly on ‘Bernie’s Breakdown’. Bernasconi’s upbringing in rural England provides rich biographical material for these songs. On the childhood tale, ‘In My School We Read the Psalms’, Bernasconi provides some excellent atmospheric, Ry Cooder-ish slide guitar interludes. ‘Gatekeeper’, an old Fred McDowell tune, gets a great work out with percussive and bottle neck effects.

Acoustic guitar albums seem to be having a resurgence lately and sales of traditional instruments are on the rise in the USA – this is a good omen for acoustic music in general. It’s also really good to hear such a fine example of guitar songs and music that is produced here in Melbourne.

Paul Barr