Bird is the Worm Best of 2014: Albums 6-10

Today’s post reveals the 6th through the 10th Bird is the Worm Top 30 jazz albums of 2014.

*****

A Best Of album has to hit me right in my heart and provoke a strong emotional reaction.  A Best Of album has to engage my head and elicit a cerebral connection.  Give me some intrigue.  Show me your music has got personality.  Extra points are awarded for doing Something Different.  I want to hear music that embraces the best qualities of creativity.  Strong musicianship alone is not enough.  Many excellent albums fall short of earning a slot on the list.  It literally pains me when I see some of the albums that aren’t included on my Best Of lists.  But I listen to a lot of music, and one of the rare downsides to encountering so much great Jazz is that some of it won’t receive the recognition it deserves.  So there you have it.

No matter how diligent a listener is and no matter how thoroughly that person covers the music scene, there will always be albums that slip through the cracks.  It’s a matter of the scarcity of time vs. the overflow of music.  It’s also a matter of subjectivity.  I try to instill an objectivity into the affair, judging each album’s qualities without consideration for my own personal preferences… at least, as much as I am able.  I can say for certain, my Best of 2014 list looks different than my personal Favorites of 2014 list.  No attempt to encapsulate the 2014 jazz album landscape will be fully comprehensive, but I humbly offer up my list with a confidence that these albums represent the best that 2014 had to offer.  But it’s a list that’s likely to gain a few addendums with the passing of time.

What you’ll read below are not reviews.  They are simple thoughts, reminiscences, fragments of recollections, and brief opinions about how each album struck me both now and when I first heard it.  There is a link to a more formal write-up following each entry… that’s where you go to find out what’s what about each recording.  Those write-ups are accompanied with embedded audio of an album track, as well as personnel and label information, links to artist, label, and retail sites, and anything else that seemed relevant at the time I wrote about the album.  Follow those links.  They might just lead to your next most favorite album ever.

Beginning on January 25th, I will be revealing 5 albums a day, with the 2014 Album of the Year announcement occurring on December 31st.  The posts will appear on the site’s main page.  This list will get updated 24 hours after each post.

So, with all that out of the way:  Let’s begin…

*****

6.  Hans Feigenwinter ZINC – Whim of Fate

There is a lullaby beauty to Whim of Fate that is just as riveting as it is comforting. The trio of Hans Feigenwinter (piano), Andreas Tschopp (trombone) and Domenic Landolf (tenor & soprano saxes) adopt flight patterns that are locked in tight with one another, and it’s why melodies are thicker, rhythms livelier and harmonies warmer than they would be were each musician off doing their own thing with only a cursory thought toward cohesiveness.  It’s an album of songs, each presented with a soft touch and resounding sigh, and while a few tracks break the mold with a little bit of random combustibility, they only serve to enhance the abiding structure rather than detract from it.  There is something supremely satisfying about the beauty expressed by these (relatively) straight-forward tunes.  In large part, it’s a result of masterfully crafted melodies, and the way in which the trio adds ornamentation and tangential creative ideas to the melody, sometimes with a plan in mind and sometimes as an afterthought.  It’s a beauty that unfolds slowly and seems without end… until the trio returns to that opening statement and brings the song home, full circle.  Just a gorgeous album with the most appealingly languorous disposition.

Released on Unit Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

7.  Andrea Keller Quartet with Strings – Wave Rider

This is how to add strings to a jazz session.  Pianist Andrea Keller avoids the easy temptation to use a string quartet for some cheap harmonic thrills and instead incorporates them into the working ideas of her jazz quartet as if strings were part of the full-time plan.  The result is accentuating the nuances and making them resonate so much stronger and taking the big moments and letting them absolutely soar.  This is thrilling music one moment after the other, but it’s the way in which Keller insinuates passages of contemplation into the expansive sound that really cinches the deal.  The ebb and flow of intensity keeps the ear alert at all times, even when it’s drinking in one dreamy interlude after the other.

Released on the Jazzhead label.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

8.  Angles 9 – Injuries

The winning formula here is the way that saxophonist Martin Küchen‘s Angles ensemble lets each song bolt right up to the precipice of coming apart at the seams, just to then bring it all back together in a final act of cohesion.  This tension, added to all the wild euphoria his nonet generates over the course of seven avant-garde party-time tracks, makes for a terrifically thrilling album.  Heavy on the wind instruments and percussion, they develop a huge sound that comes off as so much bigger by way of the raw emotion and sense of fun imparted by each tune.  Küchen keeps adding members to his Angles project ensemble, and unsurprisingly, they become increasingly boisterous with each subsequent recording.

Released on Clean Feed Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

9.  Masaa – Afkar

Forging a bond between modern European jazz and Lebanese vocals, Masaa is in the enviable position of pairing traits not so easily combined… of being both engagingly cerebral and possessing a beauty that is just plain heartbreaking.  Afkar is an album of sudden and thrilling changes in pace and emotion, and it’s pretty easy to get swept up in the process.  And though it is unconventional to encounter the pairing of Lebanese vocals in a jazz setting, it doesn’t prevent the music from presenting itself as pretty much a straight-ahead jazz album.  Even when faced with something different, the result is immutably familiar.

Released on Traumton Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

10.  Roberto Negro – Loving Suite pour Birdy So

Every motion, every note from Roberto Negro‘s Loving Suite pour Birdy So is sheer poetry.  There are elements of jazz, folk, chamber and pop in this music, but it’s not a blend of influences so much as an entirely new language, a new form of creative expression that just happens to have similar qualities to the aforementioned genres.  A live wire electricity is balanced with an elegance and curious tunefulness that is positively arresting.  The more challenging tracks possess an inimitable charm that renders the complexities as easy to accept as a warm smile.  There isn’t a moment on this excellent album that doesn’t generate all kinds of intrigue.  There are moments when I reconsider not having slotted it higher up on the Best of 2014 list.  Great albums will have that kind of effect.

Released on La Curieuse.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

Tomorrow’s post reveals the 2014 Bird is the Worm #2–#5 albums of the year.

Cheers.