However he has chosen to express himself over the years, Michael Dinalo makes it memorable
By David McGee
THE NIGHT’S LAST DANCE
Michael Dinalo
Memphis International Records (2024 release)
However he has chosen to express himself over the years, Michael Dinalo makes it memorable. In late 2024 he returned with an all-instrumental album notable for sounding better every time it’s cued up. Co-produced by the artist in tandem with Tim Carter and recorded at studios in Nashville and Ridgetop, Tennessee, and in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, Dinalo’s original songs reflect his musical roots as well as his love of nature, hence the spiritual grace in his reflective soloing and in the space he gives his collaborators (co-producer Carter on mandolin and banjo; Ken Field on harmonica; John Josefson, vindeharp) to answer and complement his viewpoint, if you will.
‘Spring and Summer Suite,’ Michael Dinalo, with Tim Carter on banjo, from The Night’s Last Dance
That The Night’s Last Dance has its heart in the natural world is emphasized in the album’s striking centerpiece, a near-five-minute, four-part, all-acoustic “Spring and Summer Suite,” in which the aforementioned collaborators play a major role. So do the soothing sounds of a babbling brook and crickets chirping softly that separate each of the suite’s mellow but lively movements (“Eggemoggin Brook,” “New River Seranade,” “Macomber Rill” and “New River Breakdown”), all with wonderful byplay between Dinalo’s guitar and Carter’s mandolin in jaunty moments, and affecting touches from Carter’s banjo in more sedate passages—all in all, close your eyes and you might think you’re hearing the earthy sounds of Norman Blake’s beloved Rising Fawn String Ensemble, which speaks volumes about the skill and expressive artistry at hand here. The nature theme continues beyond the suite with “Winter Twilight,” a co-write with Dave Jacques featuring a brooding arco bass augmenting Dinalo’s tender guitar melody evoking the day’s waning hours (the arco bass melody, along with rippling water and nature sounds, appears later in the evocative 1:28 of “Eggemoggin Interlude [A Slight Return]”) and in the shimmering album closer, “Autumn Nocturne,” another occasion for Dinalo and Carter (on mandolin) to explore a languorous, end of day groove appropriate to the season in question.
‘Walking with Robert (Memphis Blues No. 2),’ Michael Dinalo with Kim Field (harmonica), from The Night’s Last Dance
‘The Night’s Last Dance,’ Michael Dinalo, title cut from his latest album
Wonderful things happen when Dinalo goes electric too. The blues being near and dear to his heart, he gets into a gut rattling stomp with Fields’s lowdown harmonica howls on “Walking with Robert (Memphis Blues No 2)” and breaks into a cool swinging mode with a bit of twang for added effect on “Rollin’ with Walter (Donnie).” A slow, dreamy blues, “Walking with Crows,” offers an impressive display of Dinalo’s mastery of tone and texture in adding some fiery, energizing soloing over his hollow body guitar’s steady rhythmic pulse. And arguably best of all on the electric side, the title track, the album opener, with Carter’s banjo fashioning a spare, yearning melody over Dinalo’s sweet, atmospheric support—a beautiful moment to open the album as a herald of so much more beauty to come.
