Melodies are alive, remolded and reshaped in each performance. Guitarist Shane Parish embraces this continual evolution by transcribing songs from across musical genres, instruments, and eras for solo guitar. Recent albums like 2024’s Repertoire, which features 14 songs across jazz, folk, and electronic music and played on acoustic guitar, showcase his skill in transcription, as does his work transforming Bill Orcutt’s Four Guitars from a multi-tracked solo project into a quartet played live by four musicians. His practice is that of musical curiosity and technical virtuosity, highlighting all the ways a good song can be unraveled and sewn back together into something new.

On Solo At Cafe Oto, Parish presents six poignant ballads reimagined for solo electric guitar as played at London’s legendary venue in fall 2023. A European tour with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet brought him to the venue; they did a one-off show at Cafe Oto in which each member of the group played a solo set. It ended up being a special night, one of those shows in which there’s magic in the room forged by a shared love of music.

Many of the songs Parish chose to perform that evening hold a sense of mysteriousness, something immersive and intriguing to get lost in. He picked them—some of which had stayed with him for many years—because of their attention to atmosphere. It’s a characteristically eclectic vision: Three songs are by John Jacob Niles, a Kentucky balladeer whom Parish had developed a deep knowledge of over recent years, two are by English songwriters, Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins, and one is by Angelo Badalamenti, known for his unique ability to capture the dreamy and surreal darkness of David Lynch’s storied worlds. Parish’s transcriptions highlight how each of these songs create a mood in their timeless melodies, and invite us to share in them.