Beyond Jazz Reviews

Seeing Bill Frisell perform live is an illuminating experience, one in which the true measure of his talent really shines through… this in the face of having been a part of some of the most inventive, massively creative studio recordings of the last handful of decades.

I remember seeing him live at the Boulder Theater in support of his 1996 album Quartet.  I loved that album, still do.  Perhaps one of my top ten favorite albums ever.  I think his quartet performed every track on the album.  However, aside from a tear-jerking rendition of “Caffaro’s Theme,” the song I remember most from that night was a rendition of “Spoonful of Sugar” from Mary Poppins.  Frisell took his time revealing the identity of the song.  Between his guitar & effects, the trombone of Curtis Fowlkes, the trumpet of Ron Miles, and the tuba & violin of Eyvind Kang, their strangely beautiful sonic concoction only allowed fragments of the melody to drift out, meanwhile creating their blurry version of the original.  It wasn’t until several minutes into the performance that Frisell made a definitive statement of the melody.  There was an audible reaction from the crowd… gasps, laughter, the ephemera of sound signifying recognition and understanding… and Frisell smiled in response as he continued to play, clearly enjoying the result of his little game of cat-and-mouse with the audience.

He transformed that song even as he respectfully held that melody in his hand.  It was a recurring highlight to every Frisell concert I’ve attended since then (which have been many).  With each show, there will be at least one instance, sometimes more, of a pop song rendition that Frisell’s group will play coy with, revealing the fullness of the melody only after he’s suitably advanced his impressionistic vision of the original composition.  For a while there, I recall he was shaping new versions of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.”  Undoubtedly there have been many others.

His personal style, a mix of jazz and Americana with occasional infusions of looping and effects, makes for intriguing takes on familiar songs.  He peppers a song with whimsical and enlightened moments as he reveals facets of the songs that the originals hadn’t touched upon, and he does it with a sense of fun that keeps it from becoming some tedious dissertation on music.

It wasn’t that long ago he released an album of renditions of the music of John Lennon. 2011’s All We Are Saying was a bit uneven of a recording.  As a concept, it seemed like a logical decision.  The John Lennon songbook was a nice match for Frisell’s style.  No matter how far out Frisell takes his renditions, he tethers himself to the melody, and Lennon, well, he knew how to construct a melody.

The question going in on this recording was how close to the originals would Frisell tie himself.  The answer is about half and half, with perhaps a little less stretching out than I, personally, would’ve liked.

Frisell had been performing “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” in live performances and his lead-in was an extended improvisation that obscured the song until he suddenly parted the curtains and revealed the melody.

The studio version of this song gets right to the point, which removes some of the fun of hearing a Frisell rendition, but the gradual build-up of this song and its poetic outro basically flips the formula on its head, and the song becomes pleasantly more obscure towards its tail end instead of in the intro.  “Nowhere Man” also benefits from Frisell’s strong imagery and his ability to hint at the original without fully revealing its source.  He has a talent for wringing the most delicate sounds out of a melody, and he does it here big time.

“Revolution,” on the other hand, represents one of the more unfortunate tunes on the album.  It’s a bit too close to the original and adds nothing to replace the absence of vocals, and that leaves Frisell’s version feeling a bit cold.  “Beautiful Boy” and “In My Life” fall flat for similar reasons.  The studio version of “Across the Universe” also fails to stretch out in the ways Frisell’s live performances take the song to new heights.

The album’s unevenness was understandable.  Taking on a single artist’s songbook is going to create the immediate obstacle of vision vs. vision.  Two artists, regardless of how open-minded they are, there are going to be unavoidable clashes too great to overcome.  No matter how carefully Frisell handpicked songs from the John Lennon songbook, there was simply going to be a couple that refused to submit to his craftsmanship… John Lennon diamonds that would always be a flawed gemstone in the hands of others.

Bill Frisell’s newest album, Guitar in the Space Age! spreads the influences and source material out over a wider spectrum.

The album opens promisingly enough, with a cover of The Shantay’s surf-rock tune “Pipeline.”  Surf rock is an area that Frisell could conceivably mine all kinds of little gems in that way his guitar and effects can make a melody shimmer and a rhythm dance with a playful abandon.

But that gets followed with a rendition of “Turn Turn Turn,” an overplayed song that could use a long period of silence before anybody revisits it again.  It would be one thing if Frisell offered up some brilliant re-imagining of the song, but that’s not what this album is about… Frisell is celebrating the music that affected and shaped him during his early years.  So, naturally, he’s going to play it a bit straighter than he might otherwise.  That’s too bad.  He takes a similar straight-forward approach to Junior Wells’ “Messin’ With the Kid,” and it, too, suffers for it.  There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but the word ‘memorable’ will never come into play when describing it.

A cover of the Beach Boys “Surfer Girl” gets Frisell back to territory where he can play a song (relatively) close to the original while adding some creative embellishments that fall into his wheelhouse.

A Link Wray tune (“Rumble”) is an interesting choice considering both artists’ deft use of distortion throughout their respective careers.  It’s a nice vehicle for Frisell to tee off on guitar, and it provides a nice bit of contrast with the dreamier surf rock tunes.

The contrast really comes into focus on subsequent track “The Shortest Day,” one of only two Frisell originals on this recording.  It weaves a simple serenity out of a winding twisting pattern of melodic fragments.  It’s the kind of pragmatic inventiveness that Frisell harnesses to construct brilliant washes of resonant beauty.  It’s a feat he accomplishes again, later, on the other original tune, “Liftoff.”

“Rebel Rouser,” “Bryant’s Boogie” and “Cannonball Rag” don’t offer up any real surprises.  It’s not difficult to imagine that Frisell is having a ball as he records these songs in the studio, and if you’re someone who feels a nostalgic tug when these songs pour out of the speakers, then you’ll probably have a ball hearing them, too.  But nothing about them are memorable.  They are the kind of songs used as the penultimate tune to a concert encore… right before the final song that blows the roof off.

The take on Speedy West’s “Reflections From the Moon” gives some insight into the album’s potential.  Frisell takes the original’s upbeat lullaby and flips it into a dreamy, almost contemplative reverie.  It’s the original song and it’s not.  You hear the melody and then you hear its reflection, fading slowly as Frisell bends time to suit his own idea of what the tempo should be.  It’s a sonic sleight-of-hand that Frisell has developed a real knack for.  It’s a shame he didn’t utilize it more on the recording.  His interpretation of the early-period Kinks tune, “Tired of Waiting For Her” also shows what might have been.  Frisell embeds the melody into his framework, then begins to warp it and construct competing melodic lines, all bundled up in a shimmery haze and a strong pop music catchiness.

The album ends with a rendition of the Tornado’s hit “Telstar,” and, well, whatever.  It’s a pleasant tune.

There will be people out there who will enjoy this track, hell, enjoy the entire album.  But when you build a career reputation as an imaginative artist, straight-forward and boring are pretty big sins.

Inventiveness and improvisation are the qualities that allow jazz musicians to take popular songs for such a fun spin.  It’s what makes those performances something special, something to remember.  It’s also the difference between a rendition and a cover song.  Guitar in the Space Age! is an album of cover songs.

I can’t help but wonder if this album would sound better live, freed of the constraints of the studio recording environment.  And I also can’t help but think that a musician who always seems to be looking forward, searching for new sounds and following new visions, that his wayward glance back to recapture bits of his past has muted those qualities that made so much of his music so spectacular, and which cemented his deserved reputation as one of the greatest guitarists of our generation.

You can read more about this album on Frisell’s site.

Your album personnel:  Bill Frisell (electric guitar), Greg Leisz (pedal steel, electric guitar), Tony Scherr (bass, acoustic guitar), and Kenny Wollesen (drums, percussion, vibes).

Released on Okeh Records.

Music from the Seattle scene.

Available at: Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

Ambit is one of those albums that takes a pastiche approach to various genres, picking and choosing influences with an artisanal expertise and offering up a concoction that sounds a little like everything and a little like nothing at all.  The threat to this approach is a material insubstantiality, where the music is defined by its indefinable qualities and falls from memory the moment the album ends.  The inoculation to that risk is a nicely crafted melody.  The chamber-rock-jazz-indie-ambient-etc outfit The Cellar and Point are swimming in nicely crafted melodies.

The heart of the ensemble is guitarist Christopher Botta and drummer Joe Branciforte, who in his role as producer for his own projects and those of other modern, inventive acts like Ben Monder, Vijay Iyer and Nels Cline has become one of those multi-instrumentalist jack-of-all-trades that can add small doses of ingredients to completely fill a recording out.  Both he and Botta account for all the compositions, except the two classical music compositions, György Ligeti’s “étude xv” and Anton Webern’s “fünf canons i, op.16,” which, considering the ensemble members’ participation in a number of modern classical and experimental music projects, new takes on Ligeti and Webern fall right into their wheelhouse.

But inventiveness and new takes on old music and new takes on new music are all just contextual facts when compared against the album’s greatest strength… those crisp, well-crafted melodies.

“0852” sings its melody in a series of different registers and speeds.  It’s an up-tempo piece that sends love letters to the school of minimalism with its use of repetition, but the song’s hyperactive imagination just won’t let it stick to a single thought long enough to become a proper member of the class.  The melody is a simple one, skeletal even, but the way the group switches up its voicing makes all the difference in providing it some character.

“Arc” has a melody with more depth, but the real joy is the way the group keeps leading out with it, throwing the melody out ahead at intervals that give the impression of chasing after stones skipped across the surface of a pond.  It’s a fluid motion that fluctuates speeds with an unerring grace.

“Tabletop (a)” brings a rougher edge and a heavier touch.  Electric guitar comes on strong.  “Tabletop (b)” shows its romantic side, mirroring the melody of “(a),” but offering it up far less brusquely than its predecessor.

“Ruminant” harkens back to a Bill Frisell Ghost Town eeriness and folksy charm by conjuring up a melody that shimmers in the midst of a brooding song.  And on the other side of town, “Purple Octagon” has a nice jaunty bounce to go with a pop music melody… crafted simply, stated simply and friendly as hell.

“White cylinder (b)” is up-tempo and a rare time when group interplay is exchanged for a series of solos.  Vibes are the stand-out, dancing between the raindrops of the ensemble’s staggered groove.  Its predecessor, “”White cylinder (a),” sticks to the company line of ensemble play, with the interactions of banjo and viola with other ensemble members being the highlight of this number.  Both parts are up-tempo, with choppy rhythms not unlike the album’s opening statement.

Some tracks serve up the melodies only as fragments.  These also tend to be the tracks whose structure is diffuse and formless, differentiating themselves from tracks with a clearer definition.  “Fünf canons i, op.16” is characterized by its lumbering motion and brief spurts of restlessness, whereas “étude xv” is a lesson in the virtue of patience.  And then there’s title-track “Ambit,” which closes the show with a more heartfelt expression of the minimalistic traits that the ensemble merely flirted with on the album’s opening track.

An intriguing, smart album that has moments of stunning beauty.

Your album personnel:  Christopher Botta (acoustic guitar, banjo, loops), Joe Branciforte (drums, moog bass, piano, Fender Rhodes, melodica, wurlitzer), Terrance McManus (electric guitar), Christopher Otto (violin, viola), Kevin McFarland (cello), Joe Bergen (vibes), Rufus Philpot (bass), and guests: James Ilgenfritz (contrabass), Mariel Roberts (cello) and Greg Chudzik (contrabass).

Released on Cuneiform Records.

Music from NYC.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp | Amazon CD/MP3

Peter Rosendal is one of those composers that inspires a kaleidoscopic explosion of thoughts, emotions, inspirations and epiphanies.  He creates music that hits both head and heart and he achieves this with methods both complex and unconventional.  His sound is very difficult to describe yet rings with an abounding clarity.  It is music that should be filed under Something Different and it is music that is as embraceable as a pop song.  He has been at it for years, and his 2014 release Love for Snail might be his best yet.

Your album personnel: Peter Rosendal (piano, Wurlitzer, melodica, flugabone), Kristian Jørgensen (violin), Peter Fuglsang (bass clarinet, clarinet), Peter Jensen (trombone), Jeppe Gram (drums) and Kaspar Vadsholt (fretless bass).

To pull this off, he continues his collaboration with his Old Man’s Kitchen ensemble, an outfit consisting of keys, strings, reeds, brass and percussion.  The strangeness from the unusual partnership of instruments is compounded by the fact that none of the musicians play them straight.  Unusual melodic diversions, harmonic passages that possess intriguingly frayed ends, and rhythms that are better measured by their flow velocity than the timing of their beats.

Opening track “Let the Bubbles Bubble” is a strategic game of pop-goes-the-weasel with its mix of a whimsical melody and punctuated stutters of rhythm.  Bassist Kaspar Vadsholt establishes the right of way and the ensemble falls in line and adopts a motion parallel to his own.

The moody “Night Potier,” with the low moans of Peter Jensen‘s trombone and Rosendal’s piano spurring them on.  The ensemble grows more effusive, not quite so dark, and it’s the melody they use to scale up and down that emotional wall.

The jaunty “Vindhex” has a cheerful tone and a melody like a wry smile.  Rosendal sets down a nifty groove on Wurlitzer and Peter Fuglsang achieves liftoff on clarinet.

It leads, almost startlingly, into the trim elegance of “Velkommen Til Danmark.” Piano sketches out a melody for Fuglsang and Kristian Jørgensen to spring from on clarinet and violin.  Trombone’s harmonic embrace is an infusion of warmth that clinches the song’s fullness.

This leads into the boisterous party-time of “Flinke Mennesker Hverken Ham Eller Hende,” a song with the heart of traditional New Orleans and the eyes of contemporary classical.  Squiggles of sound that move with the motion of dance, nuances and details that perpetually unfold with the flawless precision of origami.  It’s also an opportunity for drummer Jeppe Gram to go to town and have a ball.

The Hungarian influence of “Loup Garou” gifts the song a bouncing motion and a happy sound, and even when it goes stark white with only piano on the move, it left an impression so indelible that the ensemble has no difficulty picking things up right where they left off after the break.

Title track “Love for Snail” moves slightly away from its ensemble nature to allow plenty of space for each musician to get in a solo.  The especially nice part of this turn of events is that individual instruments are heard to interact with only one or two other instruments and outside from how they typically fit into the greater whole.  Not only does it provide some sharp compare and contrast moments between pairs and trios of soloists and primary accompaniment, but also with a constantly changing source of influence, from straight-ahead jazz to modern classical to pop music to avant-folk.  It’s revelatory in the way it shows that the whole of the ensemble is more than just the sum of its individual parts… that there are dynamic exchanges that fall in between both extremes, individual and ensemble, and the ways in which they interact with one another are exciting variables for the composer and artists, both, to manipulate and play with as the ultimate design of the music unfolds.

The album ends with the herky-jerky motion of “Først Til Mølle,” a song that goes from a spasmodic tempo to one that takes long, slow strides to one of random scattering.  It’s the kind of playfulness and glorification of nuance and detail that Love for Snail is rife with, an attitude that a serious approach can be taken to fun music and that complexity need not preclude a genuine approachability.

Released on Stunt Records.

Music from Denmark.

Available at:  eMusic | Amazon CD | Amazon MP3

The footprints of the varied projects to which trumpeter Kenny Warren has contributed lead to and from Jazz, though rarely stays long enough to set down permanent roots.  At times, Jazz informs his music, even providing a casual influence.  He’s a member of the Balkan music brass band, Slavic Soul Party.  He’s a member of the maqam-focused Arabic and Jazz fusion group, Nashaz (whose self-titled release received a mention on the Bird is the Worm Best of 2013 list).  His work with pianist/keyboardist JP Schlegelmilch is an intriguing mix of acoustic and electronic music.  There’s the wild experimentalism of the quartet Zhirtz n Zkinz and the mix of traditional and neo-traditional sounds of Noah Garabedian’s recent release, Big Butter and the Eggmen.  He was also a member of Robert Stillman’s Archaic Future Players for their tribute to the music of John Fahey.

And it’s that last project that is most relevant to Warren’s newest release, Laila and Smitty.  A kind of Americana that has its roots in the music of Appalachia, but possesses a heart big enough to accept the lifeblood of modern musics, Laila and Smitty sounds like something old given new life in the present day.  Part sonic journal, part music photo album, Warren recalls his great-aunt and -uncle Laila and Smitty from family reunions in the foothills of the Rockies’ Front Range and not far from Warren’s childhood home on the outskirts of Denver.  He observes how he viewed their marriage with a childhood innocence… an idealized vision of married life and of what it means to be in love.  And he broaches this subject at a time when his own long-term relationship has ended, writing in the liner notes, “When you listen to this record, you’ll soon realize that these songs are really more about her than they are about Laila and Smitty.”

And Warren also writes about the passing of Laila and how that affected him deeply and for a long while after.  Through his music and at a time of personal turmoil, Warren immerses himself in memories of innocence, of idealized love and an introduction to loss as viewed through the eyes of a child.  It’s a natural reaction, a way of processing the present challenges in a way that is both detached and immutably personal.  It is why the music of Laila and Smitty is so massively genuine and unabashedly heart-on-the-sleeve open and honest.  It is emotionally raw and soothingly cathartic.

It’s also one of the best things I’ve heard in 2014.

Opening track “Your Well” sees Warren experimenting with lyrics for the first time, handling the vocals himself and working with an experimental folk sound.  It really isn’t jazz and it really doesn’t matter.  The song’s burgeoning heat contrasts perfectly with its fiercely contemplative nature.  Warren sings about a girl.  He sings about how people can grow so close and yet remain a mystery.  Later, he returns to the theme of that mystery on “Questions.”

Appalachian folk is all through this album.  A song like “He Talks to Machines (and Sometimes They to Him)” is Warren’s trumpet leading out cheerful and sunny.  MYK Freedman’s lap steel turns up the temp, challenges the song’s form, but the drums of Carlo Costa keep a brisk, jaunty pace and it’s the glue that binds it all up.  A rendition of Leadbelly’s “Rock Island Line” keeps the cheerfulness going.  On the other hand, a rendition of Leadbelly’s “In the Pines” takes the album on a haunting turn.

The song “Colorado,” a precursor to this recording, aptly captures the spirit of the music of Denver natives Bill Frisell and Ron Miles.  Warren’s trumpet soars overhead, just barely out of reach, languorous expressions that possess too much feeling to ever inspire sleep, while guitar cuts and slashes, giving some earth to trumpet’s air, and adding a roughly hewn ingredient to the song’s innate tunefulness.  Growing increasingly volatile, the melody continues to shine through, the binding agent of sounds that move freer and with greater force.

“Travelers and Wanderers” is upbeat, up-tempo, and sees Warren switching between snappy lyrics and trumpet sections that sing like Warren’s second voice.  At the opposite pole, “Warm My Soul” is a short bit of poetry, with Warren’s voice set to simple, reflective accompaniment.

More folk-jazz is found in “Country Line Waltz,” with its appealingly rustic voice and rhythmic wrinkles that are positively engaging.  “Sweet Fern” is just a fun little country ditty, no more, no less.

A few tracks add something a little different while providing greater depth to the album’s rich personality.  “To Know” is the lullaby of trumpet, the comforting strum of steel strings, and the ethereal mist of overdubbed, distorted trumpet.  “Ise’-No-Umi” is based on Japanese court music, and its dramatic harmonics and ominous tone provide the surreal moment that Warren was shooting for… a bit of an emotional jolt to bring some unease to an otherwise cheery album.  So, too, does “Two Sisters.”  Tom Waits provided a straight-forward cover of the murder ballad on 2006’s Orphans.  Warren, intriguingly, gives the song a disconcerting lyricism reminiscent of something that would sit plumb on Waits’ experimentally inclined albums Raindogs and Bone Machine.

The album ends much in the same way which it began.  A hopping rendition of Mississippi John Hurt’s country blues tune “Nobody’s Dirty Business” is upbeat, warm and signals the album’s reach for an innocence passed.  “Lost and Found” closes the album with that heart-on-the-sleeve emotional honesty that inspired the album in the first place.

Just outstanding.

Your album personnel:  Kenny Warren (trumpet, voice), Jeremiah Lockwood (electric guitar, dobro), MYK Freedman (lap steel), Josh Myers (acoustic bass), and Carlo Costa (drums).

The album is Self-Produced.

Music from the Brooklyn scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp CD/Digital/Vinyl | Amazon CD/MP3