Artist:     Victor Krummenacher

Album:     Blue Pacific

Label:     Veritas Recordings

Release Date:     3.1.19

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Still reeling from a painful divorce, Victor Krummenacher embarked on an emotionally draining journey to Blue Pacific, his ninth solo album. To reach its golden shores, the co-founder of eclectic indie misfits Camper Van Beethoven and art-rock subversives Monks of Doom put himself through the ringer, undergoing a period of intense introspection. A little worse for wear, but perhaps wiser for having gone through it all, Krummenacher has safely arrived at his destination.

Scenes of expansive, wistful folk balladry and languid Americana, as well as cathartic roots-rock uprisings, are staged with care on Blue Pacific, as Krummenacher and his co-conspirators paint them with electric and acoustic guitars and a range of instrumentation. Everything from dulcimer to dobro and pedal and lap steel, as well as a variety of organs and even synthesizer, are artfully blended into tasteful fabrics of Americana, as “Skin & Bones” becomes an immersive aurora borealis and the bittersweet, country-tinged “No Safe Place to Fall,” with its sad accordion swells, assumes beaten-down, Dylan-like poignancy.

Writing eloquently of getaways, regrets, bitter endings, cockeyed optimism and soul-baring desperation, Krummenacher dives headlong into an ocean of raw heartache and honest self-reflection with lyrical clarity. It’s impossible to say if Krummenacher has completely healed and is finally at peace, although the dark, pounding storm and great gnashing of teeth that is “Find a Way Out” suggests the turbulence hasn’t subsided. Building to a crashing crescendo, it wrestles with Nick Cave’s sense of dramatic tension and doesn’t let go, while the surging power of an assertive and vivid “Lawrence in the Desert” harnesses The Who’s epic defiance and noisy grandeur.

Urgent and angular, with its sharp edges sanded down, “Some Time Ago” injects punk-rock vigor into Blue Pacific, but the record also echoes Neil Young’s deepest and most breathtaking brush strokes with the gnarly, drawn-out plunges of a stirring and soulful “Every River Rises.” Earnest and passionate, “The Prettiest Train” is an infectious and industrious little engine that could, its momentum buoyed by smart handclaps, but it’s the delicate picking and sweeping violins of “Nowhere Out There on the Line” and the limitless horizons of a swaying, slightly twangy “Headed West” that beckon like sirens. Heed their call. Even with its rocky coastline, Blue Pacific is accessible and a natural wonder.

—Peter Lindblad