Nathan Salsburg - Psalms

Released 20th August 2021.

Acclaimed guitarist Nathan Salsburg has announced a new record Psalms which will be released on August 20th. Psalms is a collection of new arrangement of Biblical psalms, sung in Hebrew by Salsburg with a backing band which includes Joan Shelley, Will Oldham, James Elkington and Spencer Tweedy. Salsburg, an archivist with the Alan Lomax Archive, says the project came of "a desire for some kind of rigorous and creative Jewish engagement, which came to take shape in the irregular practice of opening a bilingual Book of Psalms at random, scanning the English of a particular chapter for passages that resonated conceptually and emotionally, and scanned rhythmically. Copying those selections over to a separate page," then threading them into new melodies.

He goes on to say: My formative experiences with Jewish music were collective and participatory, at synagogue and summer camp in the 80s and early 90s, where the repe