The more essential an artist is, the more difficult to introduce them. Often the best thing to do is offer no more than their name and maybe the title of the album before pressing the play button. As difficult as Kottke may be to satisfactorily introduce—cliché terms such as ‘pioneer’ and ‘prodigy’ will inevitably aboud—it’s more difficult to mention his iconic folk status while conveying at the same time the uniqueness of his acoustic guitar within the genre, to describe the way he can sound simultaneously classic and fresh. Happily, just one listen to "Vaseline Machine Gun," which opens with a bottleneck version of "Taps," will get us there. more ›