Norwegian jazz guitarist Terje Rypdal's first solo album, Bleak House is generally considered an outlier in his discography. It's a diverse, scatterbrained set of songs, only two of which ("Winter Serenade", "Sonority") are in line with the free-form, ambient jazz that comprises the rest of his discography. Otherwise, there's some post-bop ("Wes"), a big-band workout ("Bleak House"), a spine-tingling, vocal-driven, psych-tinged blues number ("Dead Man's Tale"), and a low-key, acoustic outro that reminds me of Milton Nascimento. I would say that it's not the best intro to Rypdal, but it was the first Rypdal record that I heard, and I eventually collected his entire catalogue, so...
Track listing:
1. Dead Man's Tale
2. Wes
3. Winter Serenade
4. Bleak House
5. Sonority
6. A Feeling of Harmony
I tried to live a good life
But now I know that I was wrong
