Joe Westerlund is a drummer familiar from many possible contexts. For a decade, he served as the dynamic backbone of Megafaun, the North Carolina trio of sophisticated songwriting and winning charisma that he cofounded. As Grandma Sparrow, Westerlund constructed fantastical song cycles about an imagined town, a place where swooping strings and sudden singalongs told the stories of characters you needed to be real. Under his own name, Westerlund—a longtime student of Milford Graves—has emerged as an intuitive improviser, committed to scoring deep yogic practice. He serves now as the pulse beneath the plaintive Americana of Mandolin Orange and Daughter of Swords and, previously, as the anchor for the folk abstraction of Califone. He added incisive percussion to a big-band version of Sylvan Esso and buoyed the svelte stoner soul of Gayngs, old friends from his Wisconsin childhood.
All those threads collide during Curiosities from the Shift, Westerlund’s immersive third album under his own name. A 12-track playground of endlessly interwoven beats and melodies, it’s an album where Westerlund’s clave enthusiasm collides with his textural experimentalism, where his rhythmic symphony of one shakes hands with a half-dozen friends decorating this space alongside him.
