Ambient Americana

I first heard Lanterna a few years ago between segments on NPR. It seemed to be a favorite of the music director. I understand why. After a couple of brief tastes, I couldn’t get enough.

For all intents and purposes, we could say that Henry Frayne is Lanterna. Although he enlists other personnel for recording and touring, he is the sole writer. His creative well is obviously full with more than five albums under his belt. Henry Frayne maintains full-time employment, when not recording and performing music, as a sound engineer for WILL-AM radio in Illinois.

This is guitar-based instrumental music that has been classified as indie rock, probably for marketing purposes. Too many people have asked me what I would call this because it has a distinctly fresh sound. My classification would be guitar-based ambient rock. There are too many ambient elements to be rock, and too many rock elements like drums, consistent use of cymbals, and rock chord structures and melodic phrasing for it to be solely ambient. Lanterna’s material carries bigger energy than a lot of ambient music. It is wondrously serene and energizing at the same time. Subtle use is made of a synthesizer, tape effects, vocalizations, and location recordings.

Consistent from album to album, the music is full of dreamy, jangly, echoey, and bouncing electric guitar, sometimes played over the top of acoustic guitars. Then there are tight, clean doubled guitar lines without any of those spacey effects, that give me that familiar feeling of coming home, like those heard on “Venture” and Summer Break” from Desert Ocean. When listening to tracks like “Summer Break” on the road, I find myself so inspired that I just want to keep on driving. It reminds me how good it is to be alive. Check it out. It never ceases to amaze me how music can change the feel of my immediate environment. I once drove for eight hours listening tirelessly to the same Lanterna CD. The soundscapes provided a new lush environment for the external landscape to sit in.

There are quiet, acoustic dominant compositions like “Cross Country” on Desert Ocean, “Elm Street“, “Spirits,” and “New Moon” from Elm Street that have lent themselves to a more folk style or what I like to call Ambient Americana, in contrast to a “new agey” style that you might have heard on the Windham Hill label. Lanterna can also get dark and strange at times as can be heard on “Old Seattle” and Saturns Rings” on Elm Street, and “Fog” on Desert Ocean. These help seat the music firmly in the ambient arena.

There is a free improvisational feel about Lanterna’s music, but it is very well constructed. It often gets my creative juices flowing. I hear many of the tracks as rhythm tracks and find myself creating a vocal melody line on top of these songs. Maybe it’s because I’m creative by nature, or maybe it’s because they have a very open ended feel.

Like wine, certain music is right for certain occasions. Lanterna seems to easily fit many situations and beautiful cover art is a bonus part of the package. There are several albums to choose from and it’s really hard to pick a favorite, but if you want to rock, star gaze, day dream, trip out, color your environment or break free of it, I suggest you grab one of these for yourself.