BELLA1390CD Release date: 24th February 2023 "Strange Dance’s best track by a significant margin is also its most upbeat: “Picking Up Pieces,” which charges ahead in a series of interlocking syncopations, with guitars and bowed strings all acting like percussion instruments, making their brief contributions to the precisely arranged tapestry and then backing away until it’s time to strike again. The title track also foregrounds Selway’s idiosyncratic approach to rhythm, setting his voice against drums that clatter and echo like a digital-age update to Tom Waits’ junkyard blues, with little other accompaniment. (Interestingly, Selway chose not to play his primary instrument on Strange Dance, handing drum duties over to Valentina Magaletti of Vanishing Twin.) In these moments and others—like “What Keeps You Awake at Night,” which begins with percolating vibraphones and dissolves in a flurry of pizzicato strings—it’s possible to glimpse an alternate vision of Selway’s music, which focuses on his and his collaborators’ ears for unusual grooves and striking combinations of sounds, treating these as the main event rather than set dressing."
