San Francisco Bay-area guitar conceptualist Carl Weingarten released Ember Days in 2021 and in a prolific twist of fate, he returns in early 2022 with his latest and possibly greatest music release called Stop Me Try. With 5 tracks, clocking in at a modest 33-minutes, Stop Me Try is nevertheless packed with copious sonic concepts that encompasses guitar-noir, hip-hop, New Age Jazz, some surf-guitar flecked passages and much more. Compared with Ember Days, which included a variety of accompanying musicians, Stop Me Try is mainly Carl in his studio with his long-time musical cohort, fretless bass ace Michael Manring. Producing an album that is equally entertaining and mesmerizing, Carl truly rises to the occasion on Stop Me Try, performing on acoustic & electric guitars, slide guitar, keyboards and digital percussion.

For those music fans following Carl since his early solo albums going all the way back to the late 1980s and even his very early 1980’s works with his band Delay Tactics, 2022’s Stop Me Try will arrive as a most welcome sonic revelation. The most obvious inclusion is the profusion of digital percussion which gives Stop Me Try a kind of sonic action running throughout the entire album. Although all the tracks benefit from the percussion sounds, one track in particular, track 2, “Ides Of May” appears to be lifted well off the ground and seems to fly into a sonic outer space groove all its own. Featuring multiple percussion tracks, “Ides Of May” sounds influenced by progressive rock imagery as well, although you would have to listen carefully to examine all the multiple musical overlays spilling out of your speakers. For an artist breaking new musical ground since 1980, Carl Weingarten continues making music history with his 2022 masterpiece Stop Me Try.