Album Review | ‘The Fine Art of Forgetting’ by Joe Woodard

The plaintive tinklings of an impaired music box bookend a baker’s dozen contemplative pieces for solo guitar by Joe Woodard in The Fine Art of Forgetting. [Editor’s note: That’s the same Josef Woodard, senior arts writer, whose potent prose graces our pages almost daily.]

This is Woodard’s second recent solo guitar release, following Wedding Album (On This Day), light compositions for his daughter’s wedding in 2022. Though more substantial, these are similarly thoughtful ruminations, and more than a little bit nostalgic, as the album’s title as well as songs like “Life in Progress,” “Sweet Time,” and “A Dream I’ve Yet to Have” suggest. 

It’s no surprise that someone with as broad musical tastes and as long a career as Woodard’s tends a rambling garden of styles. These are so well naturalized that it’s nearly impossible to tease apart the Brazilian harmonies, the Metheney-jazz textures, the French Impressionist colorism, and the Renaissance dance steps. And then there’s Woodard’s signature humor, which shines through in the loopy pastiche of “No Point Beyond this Alcohol.”

These are still waters that run deep. The tempos are mostly slow, and often loosely stretched, as in speech. The harmonies are equally free, a palette of rich and complex colors that shift from dark to light like shadows under a tree. The melodies are deceptively simple, sometimes past even before you knew they were upon you. All of these give the album a kind of floaty feel. Understated, whispering, sometimes even mumbling; never insistent. 

Woodard himself calls the album “ambient dinner music,” and indeed it’s perfect for alt-holiday listening before a warm fire. But there’s a lot more to it than that, and these pieces amply reward deeper dives on repeated hearings. You may not come away humming the tunes, but the album’s wistful mood will linger long.

You can listen to the The Fine Art of Forgetting in a multitude of places, including:

Digitalia: bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Soundcloud .

For CDs: Discogs, Amazon, Household Ink Products page