Zachary Hay Zachary Hay

More or less known for his projects Bronze Horse and The Dove Azima, which cloaked his name on his three past albums, Zachary Hay is finally releasing a self-titled LP. When Scissor Tail Editions first discovered his music, they were floored by his stream-of-consciousness approach to acoustic guitar. A very playful, innocent and intuitive flow of ideas created some incredibly poignant songs, feeling as if they already existed and rose from oblivion—preformed. This album, like his others, would fit nicely alongside Willie Lane, Jandek, MV & EE, Tashi Dorji and Loren Connors. Or imagine if John Fahey and Jack Rose were stripped of their deep knowledge of blues music and were distilled down to pure melody and feel, they may have made similar choices on the guitar as Zachary Hay here. This album is the most sincere album of contemporary guitar music Scissor Tail has heard. His perfect, simple technique adds a timelessness to each song that could be vaguely described as “American Primitive”—a tradition that includes Charalambides, Christina Carter, and Scott Tuma, as much as Fahey and his contemporaries.