Raft

Cooper ventures further out, navigating abstract naval routes plotted by lonely hearts and plagued by daydreams, his tides of burbling static and deftly deployed lap-steel influenced by the solitary missions of real-life sea salts such as Vital Alsar and William Willis, their adventures a certain metaphor for Cooper’s own singular musical path.

Rafts may seem conceptually like a retrospective or statement of purpose, and it holds up nicely as a portrait, but it should also be considered a refinement, wading further away from readymade images of the tropics and into the depth of the traveler’s imagination.

Tempting as it is to try, given the linear nature of both the album’s first half and the journeys it references, Raft resists being poured into any one narrative container.

With Raft, he drifts past all of the above touchstones and ventures a bit further out, with each of the album’s seven tracks delving deeper into the 74-year-old musician’s idiosyncratic sound.