One of the more encouraging signs of life in the current music scene has been the slow, sure rise of Bill Frisell into the ranks of alternative guitar heroes. His road to success has been a long, weird one, starting more than a decade ago when he was virtually the house guitarist for the German jazz label ECM. Then came countless guest shots, work with John Zorn's audacious Naked City and a steady string of inventive, genre-busting solo albums showcasing the bittersweet poetry of Frisell's playing.

More than almost anyone else in the last decade, Frisell brought a new voice to the fraying realm of the electric guitar. Other guitarists, for the most part, resort to chest thumping and smug, loud assertions. Frisell has made an art form out of head scratching, with stuttering, slithering sentence fragments for licks. He freely mixes the cerebral approach of jazz and the raw good humor of rock & roll and various shades of pop without trespassing into the dread world of fusion.

To be sure, Frisell is a slippery devil, a crazy quilter who goes every which way in pursuit of dry humor and a new musical attitude. Who else could make such a natural connection between the screaming tones of Jimi Hendrix and the circus-tinged exoticism of Nino Rota's Fellini film scores? Last year's Have a Little Faith was a festival of cover songs, with music by such sundry Americans as Aaron Copland, John Hiatt, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Sonny Rollins and John Philip Sousa.

This Land consists mostly of material from Frisell's old songbook, rearranged for a kind of dream-world cabaret pit band – clarinetist Don Byron, saxophonist Billy Drewes, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron. A humble leader, Frisell refrains from oversaturating the mix with guitar, leaning instead on the band's alternately luscious and raucous textures.

True to its title, This Land presents more Americana of Frisell's own devising, with songs like "Jimmy Carter" and "Julius Hemphill" (the underrated alto saxophonist-composer) serving as unofficial poles of influence. Some of Frisell's "greatest hits" are present, too, from the knotty inside-out blues charm of "Resistor" to the warm, dark passages of "Strange Meeting," reshuffled and recast for the current band.

Like most of Frisell's albums, This Land provides a highly eclectic and picturesque listening experience, colored by a kind of goofball experimentalism. Strange meetings of the mysterious and the earthy, the melancholy and the giddy, make perfect sense by Frisell's deliciously warped way of thinking. The warpage is catching on and not a moment too soon. (RS 691)

JOSEF WOODARD