Dec 16 2017
Recommended: FOX + Chris Cheek – “Pelican Blues”
The first thing FOX does is set the scene. They present their quirky lyricism with “Moonshine” and “Cliff Tone.” Their penchant for enchanting melodies is rolled out with “Fox on the Run” and “Canoë.” These statements are plenty enjoyable on their own merits. However, from that point on, the Fox trio of guitarist Pierre Perchaud, bassist Nicolas Moreaux and drummer Jorge Rossy exploit all that groundwork by setting the two forms of expression off one another, like tides competing for primacy over the ocean. The transitions back and forth instigate a perpetually adjusting method of attention, where the quirky lyricism demands a view from a distance to best appreciate its curious motion, while the deep melodicism is the kind of thing to become immersed in completely.
The presence of Chris Cheek on Pelican Blues goes a long way to explaining the accomplishment of this particular sonic feat. The saxophonist has a proven talent at drawing out a clear beauty from the most acerbic environments, and conversely, bringing some humor to moments where the melodic intensity threatens to become overly dramatic. He and Perchaud in particular achieve a unity that adds a firework display of texture to the simplest melodic phrasing.
The deep moodiness of “2am” collides with the sunny attitude of title-track “Pelican Blues” and the effusive “Mardi Gras Bubble Gumbo,” in turn, has the shadow of the solemn “Spirit of St. Louis” following it around. The tonal echoes from song to song, passage to passage, resonate like mad, even to the point where subsequent listens lead to revised interpretations of where particular pieces land in the spectrum of changes. It gets to where no one song ever truly ends until the album has played its final notes. That’s pretty cool.
Their eponymous 2016 debut Fox was pretty damn good, but Pelican Blues is a serious step up.
Your album personnel: Pierre Perchaud (guitar, banjo), Nicolas Moreaux (bass), Jorge Rossy (drums, vibraphone), Chris Cheek (tenor & soprano saxes) and guests: Vincent Peirani (accordion), Christophe Panzani (tenor sax).
Released on the Jazz & People label.
Listen to more of the album on the label’s Bandcamp page.
Music from Paris, France.
There’s so much to like about the newest from 
It’s pretty easy to fall for this embrace of Middle-Eastern and Appalachian musics. A charming twang, dexterous melodic leaps, some effusive stomps, and a simple swaying motion all come together on the latest release from the
Dec 17 2017
Welcome to the Best of 2017
At some point during the Best of 2017 festivities, you will be reading about Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening.
When I first began putting together this album’s synopsis for the Best of 2017 list, I wrote how, for all intents and purposes, Mandorla Awakening really isn’t a jazz album. It, like other recent Mitchell recordings, transcends the jazz classification. The music makes ineffective any attempt at categorization. It’s as if a bird transformed into a phoenix mid-flight and headed out to the far horizon. But that doesn’t mean we need forget that the music was once a bird, nor do we ignore that some of its feathers are woven into the Jazz nest.
In an interview I conducted with Donny McCaslin, he speaks of coming up through the jazz tradition. It wasn’t some momentous declaration… more just an aside during a quick tour of his music background. But it’s an important distinction, and one that I’d imagine McCaslin takes to heart. Because he, too, has since transcended the jazz tag that was originally home turf tread earlier in his career. The electro-acoustic heart that beats at the center of McCaslin’s sound today is something that becomes increasingly difficult to truly nail down as anything less vague than “his thing.”
And when it comes to exploring new creative vistas, that’s probably as it should be. I gotta wrap my head around this is a normal, human reaction to accompany all of the joy and awe and happiness and contemplation from interacting with something new. And, by extension, it’s understandable if the artist, as they follow new visions and, in a way, reinvent themselves, that they might not like to feel pigeonholed to what-came-before. It’s not that Mitchell or McCaslin have turned their back on jazz or no longer play it or that it has stopped informing any new projects they embark upon. It’s simply a recognition that things change, and a desire that current perception acknowledge the transformation in some small way.
So, even when it’s near impossible (and, by the way, not altogether essential) to give name to the new music these artists present in 2017, there’s a real benefit to simply recognizing the works as being of the tradition… that the music on this Best of 2017 list (and, really, pretty much throughout all of Bird is the Worm), while it might not sound like Jazz as it first became known, it is being created by musicians who came up through the jazz tradition, and those experiences inform the music as it’s created, even if nothing about the way it sounds necessarily points to those origins. And that’s a good thing. The point isn’t solely to cook up some good jazz. The point is to nurture personal creativity, to have lofty aspirations and expand out toward those horizons. If what comes out is rooted in the blues, maybe swings or bops a little or a lot, and has healthy doses of improvisation, then, great, we got ourselves a jazz album. If not, then we’ve got ourselves a not-jazz album created by someone of the tradition. If there’s one thing Bird is the Worm has illustrated in the six years the open sign has been on, it’s how insufficient the word jazz has become to describe the modern jazz scene. This list, highlighting the Best of 2017, is a celebration of it.
Speaking of which, you’ll notice before long that the celebration has gotten a bit longer. I’d originally planned to extend the Best Of list by ten. You can thank Marta Sanchez for that. There’s always going to be exceptional albums that don’t get a slot on any one year’s Best Of list. That’s unavoidable. It’s certainly true of 2017. There will always be albums that haunt me, those that got left off a list, and over time, continue to prove the mistake of their exclusion. There’s never enough time to listen to everything as much as it deserves, to give each album sufficient time to show everything it’s got. Sanchez’s excellent 2015 release Partenika was one of the final cuts from that years Top 30 Best Of list, and it, as much as any album, exemplifies the difficultly of making these lists with available time and resources. So, the simplest solution that presented itself was to expand the Best Of list by ten. That was the intention for the Best of 2017 list. What I didn’t anticipate was the depth of 2017’s talent pool. There was just no algorithm I could devise that could justify leaving off certain albums while including equally deserving ones. It just became easier to spare my sanity and expand the list to a Top 50. There are still some amazing albums that didn’t make the list, but it was easier to justify. In any event, that’s how this year’s changes came to be. I might scale it back to forty in 2018, unless that also becomes impossible or if the feedback on 2017 suggests otherwise. We’ll pretty much just have to see.
Ultimately, however, all that truly changed from previous years are the total number of albums included. As in previous years, I’m looking for albums that deliver an impact across the board… cerebral, physical and emotional aka head, heart and soul. It’s not enough that they’re simply a very good album. They have to possess gravitas or offer something a little bit different, or, conversely, present the familiar better than anybody else on the scene. Bonus points are awarded for wild creativity and experimentalism. These are albums, released approximately between November of last year and November of this year, that make a statement of who the individual artists and ensemble are at that point in time, and, when the list is taken as a whole, a reflection of the rich diversity and immense strength of the modern jazz and improvised music scene.
And so, with the preamble out of the way… Let’s begin.
Welcome to the Bird is the Worm Best of 2017
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By davesumner • Announcement - Site & General, Recap: Best of 2017 • 0 • Tags: Jazz - Best of 2017