What Nature Intended

Album Review

After 30-plus years of guitar troubadourship that found him supporting, jamming, or writing with everyone from Mick Ronson and Steve Forbert to Lone Justice and Marc Cohn, Shane Fontayne has issued What Nature Intended, his debut solo album. As he's no stranger to studio work, the album's impeccably crafted sonics are no surprise. What is remarkable is Fontayne's ability to craftily unify his stylistic wanderlust, even if his experiments don't always bear fruit. He seems to have picked up unique pebbles from each stop on his lengthy tour as a talented hired gun, and placed each one carefully into a personal musical mosaic. Like Matt Johnson or Karl Wallinger, Fontayne is adept at gritty, erudite album rock that takes full advantage of studio technology to dose it in atmospherics. "Spin It" and "Bubble & Squeak" are crackling guitar songs with patched-in programming and clavinet, moving on an exposed electric current that terminates somewhere down the crazy river. But he moves earnestly into finger-popping, vintage R&B for "There's Only Room for Me," and "So High" seems to be built entirely of gossamer vocal harmonies that drift on a magic raft of psychedelia. These tangents aren't as successful as Nature's main thrust, but Fontayne has to be forgiven some self-indulgence. It's his first chance to record a batch of his own songs, after all, and the liner note image of his solitary form strolling into the desert, trusty guitar in hand, lets listeners know he's a restless soul. Luckily, Fontayne often sounds like he's swallowed a bucket of that sand. This ensures plenty of vocal texture as he sings about love and life's lessons learned. Likewise, his varied six-string work — complemented by high-powered appearances from pals like trumpeter Chris Botti's turn on "Voodoo in the House" — makes What Nature Intended a pretty comfortable handmade quilt that chronicles one man's long strange trip.