Duration

The first moments of Duration, with the initial sigh of pedal steel, color the importance of subtle choices that nurture and build the album’s quiet country brilliance. Local musician Donald Beaman may be the voice and songwriter leading his backup band, The Spirit Molecules, but it is the contributions and instincts of his fellow players—guitarist Ken Lovgren, bassist Kirt Lind, drummer Michael Nolin and guest pedal-steel player Dane Horne—that give Duration its loose, elastic identity, an almost jazz-like feel. The shape, lyrics and verse are not without boundaries, but its languid, almost liquid flow is an insistent, many-hued bloom of patience and precision. “The Smoke Rolled Through the Branches” charms, with its gentle currents finding Beaman and band at their most melodic, stumbling downward into disintegrating waltz. “Metal Mirror” is the boldest move beyond their usual pace, propelled forward into a hypnotic chant-like chorus. In the end, Duration trusts that perhaps it’s the quietest voice at the back of the room, away from the light, that has the most to share.