Red Cross is John Fahey’s last album. Recorded a few months before the guitarist’s death in February 2001, it is a tantalizing taste of where he was musically in those final days.
If there was one thing about Fahey’s recordings that made them distinctive, it was their unpredictability. Fahey was an American original, a crucial figure in expanding the boundaries of the acoustic guitar over the last few decades of the 20th century.
On this recording there are expansive and decidedly nontraditional interpretations of such standards as Irving Berlin’s “Remember” and George & Ira Gershwin’s “Summertime”. But there are also a couple of electric guitar musings that are equally haunting and full of intrigue. The final listed track (there’s a hidden track so buried most folks may never find it) is called “Untitled With Rain”, a mysterious tone poem of sorts that ebbs and flows with an eccentric, psychedelic throb.
As with all releases on the Revenant label, the packaging of Red Cross is worth mentioning: It’s an odd, rectangular-shaped letter-pressed foldout with booklet that contains a wonderfully warm glimpse of Fahey’s last days by confidante Glenn Jones of the Chicago band Cul de Sac.
