John Carroll Kirby - My Garden (LP)

John Carroll Kirby’s My Garden has that rare quality where the first spin calms your shoulders and the tenth opens secret doors. Released on Stones Throw Records on April 24, 2020, it arrived at a moment when quiet felt like a survival tool. Kirby, the Los Angeles pianist and producer who had just contributed to Solange’s When I Get Home and would soon produce Eddie Chacon’s Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, leans into mood and melody here, trimming everything down to statements that feel simple until you chase them.

The record is largely instrumental, and it plays like a guided walk through different pockets of a city, each one full of flowing keys and patient synth lines. Kirby’s touch on acoustic piano is featherlight, but he keeps a steady pulse underneath, a gentle nudge to keep moving. The synths feel hand-warmed rather than glossy, almost like he tuned them for sunlight. If you’ve loved the hushed spaces of Harold Budd, the soft-focus edges of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ambient work, or the humid dreamscapes of Jon Hassell, you’ll hear distant cousins here, though Kirby never sounds like anyone but himself.

“By Myself” was the gateway for many, and it earns the job. The melody hovers just above the ground, almost conversational, with small shifts in phrasing that keep it from turning into wallpaper. “Blueberry Beads” threads a similar needle, with a theme that sounds like a folk song beamed in from another room. Kirby favors restraint. He lets a phrase hang, then answers it with a harmony or a new color from the synths. The pieces are short, but they linger. You start recognizing his fingerprints right away. A small ascending figure on the right hand. A bass part that walks only when it needs to. A shimmer that arrives for eight bars and never returns.

My Garden is not a showy record, yet it is quietly confident. Kirby has earned his studio chops working with big names, but he sets ego aside and writes in scenes. You can tell he’s thinking about space. He leaves room for the listener to fill in the weather and the season. The cover art, a lush and slightly surreal tableau, isn’t a bad key to the listening experience. This is a garden with corners. Some paths open into sun. Some bend toward shade.

Stones Throw was a fitting home for it. The label has long championed idiosyncratic instrumental music that rewards repeat plays, and this album sits comfortably on the shelf next to those records. When the world locked down, Kirby followed My Garden with Conflict, a sparse set of solo piano pieces, but this one remains the fuller statement, with layers that glint in different lights. In 2021 he shifted gears again with Septet, assembling a small band and moving toward live interplay, and in 2022 he went more rhythmic with Dance Ancestral. My Garden marks the turning point where his ideas about melody and atmosphere clicked.

Critics caught that. The album drew steady praise in 2020 for its poise and its sense of place, and fans gravitated to a handful of tracks that still anchor his live sets. Put it on late at night and you notice how much the tempos breathe. Put it on in the morning and it radiates gently, like a window slowly opening. I have put it on while cooking, while reading, and while flipping through a new arrivals bin at a Melbourne record store, and it makes each scene feel curated without getting in the way.

If you are crate-digging, My Garden vinyl is a smart pickup. The artwork belongs in your hands, and the mastering gives those low, steady notes a bit more body. John Carroll Kirby vinyl tends to disappear from indie shop shelves, so if you find a copy, grab it. If you need to buy John Carroll Kirby records online, keep an eye on Stones Throw’s site and the usual suspects. For folks hunting John Carroll Kirby albums on vinyl in Australia, plenty of shops that specialize in vinyl records Australia wide have stocked it off and on since release.

What keeps me returning is how human the record feels. It is not trying to dazzle. It is trying to be useful, which in music is a high bar. Kirby built a set of pieces that hold you without pinning you down, and in doing so he made an album that sneaks into your life. That is the mark of a keeper. My Garden does not shout its worth. It grows into it.