Walt McClements

No one is using the accordion like Walt McClements. Though the Los Angeles instrumentalist has offered accompaniment for the likes of Weyes Blood and Hurray for the Riff Raff, he is increasingly employing his keys and bellows to create luminous records that harness life’s pain and possibility—that balance hope and horror. Indeed, On A Painted Ocean stands as one of 2025’s most commanding albums, McClements using ecstatic drone, spiritual jazz, and post-rock grandeur to build one-person symphonies from an instrument that has too often been dismissed as a curiosity or relic. Just as his frequent collaborator and friend Mary Lattimore has done for the harp, McClements has found a riveting way to situate the accordion in a modern context.

A North Carolina native turned on by the vibrant creative community in the state’s Piedmont, McClements eventually busked his way to New Orleans, starting and joining a series of madcap bands there. Those stints eventually led to a series of wild-eyed and wide-lensed solo albums as Lonesome Leash. Just before the pandemic began, though, he began exploring accordion effects, offering long-form instrumental performances where the hum slowly evolved into a web of rapture. His 2021 debut under his own name, A Hole in the Fence, was the promising start for what On a Painted Ocean fully delivered—emotional, surprising, and magnetic solo pieces, where electronics and the occasional guest create dramatic spans of musical cinema, where the accordion emerges with the radiance of a new star.