“Radio Flyer,” in particular, conjures the same childhood nostalgia as Living With Yourself while roaming further afield. The opening melodies are buoyant and carefree, but midway through they all fade out save one contemplative line that’s laid bare. When the rest return, they’re lower, rumbling, following the lead of the lonely, persistent motif. The song brings to mind the classic Calvin and Hobbes wagon escapades, which use harebrained adventures as the unlikely setting for philosophical musings on mortality.
That aching beauty is a strange contrast with A Pocket Full of Rain’s queasier moments, which roll in like thunderstorms to disrupt otherwise tranquil scenes. “Sick Chemistry,” in particular, recalls Emeralds’ drones, a billowing briar patch of distorted, sustained notes that stretches on for miles. But for much of the album, McGuire plucks out single notes on an open tuning, allowing him to layer tracks atop one another without getting muddled by fatter chord strums. The technique gives the Cleveland native’s work a passing similarity to Midwest emo and explains why the title track sounds like an American Football cassette left out in the sun for too long. The more opaque sound of “Sick Chemistry,” the album’s penultimate song, offers a palate cleanser before stunning closer “Sun Shining Through the Open Barn Door,” a gentle, pastoral postscript that tones down the effects-laden Frippery in favor of acoustic bliss.
Although McGuire’s early recordings have drawn frequent comparison to kosmische works of the ’70s, particularly Manuel Göttsching’s Inventions for Electric Guitar, McGuire insists in the Pocket Full of Rain liner notes that he hadn’t heard Göttsching’s work until “a year or so before” recording this album. There’s no denying the similarities of their delay-driven styles, but it’s also easy to see how McGuire arrived at this point on his own. For one, there’s something distinctly American, and more specifically Midwestern, about his sound. His approach to experimental music is earthy and humble, and not overly concerned with transcendence unless it’s to be found within its own surroundings.
There’s a certain sense of inevitability when you plop a restless creative in a room with nothing but a guitar and a bevy of effects to choose from. While McGuire would eventually learn to harness those effects with more specificity, and branch out to include other instruments and even lyrics, A Pocket Full of Rain is a captivating portrait of a green genius with his head down, surrounded by pedals, dreaming of possibilities.