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June 27, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Myele Manzanza: A Love Requited

Myele Manzanza

A Love Requited

First World Records UK

ONE was Myele Manzanza’s debut solo album – by the time of which he was a veteran of so many performances, sideman, band-member, DJ, composer. He had runs on the board already. And it showed. So much so that by the time of OnePointOne (his American live debut) that very first solo album felt like bedsit-leftovers.

That’s even more the case now with the released of third album, A Love Requited. It’s big statement stuff. Capital Letter Jazz. As on opener, Ritual, he not only doffs the cap to Coltrane and his A Love Supreme that this album is in some part referencing, he also pushed the gate wide open for his talented collaborators and contributors to bolt at running pace. Australian bassist Ross McHenry is a longtime musical alumni and his work here as both player and co-producer is immediately felt.

Yes it’s a ‘drum album’ in the sense that you will hear Myele solo over squalls of sax late on the opener, and again near the end of the record over a clever piano ostinato which again brings to mind Elvin Jones on A Love Supreme as well as Joe Morello on Brubeck’s Take Five. But you will also, for the most part, hear Manzana as ‘just’ the drummer in the band. Which is to say you will always hear and feel the drums – at times you can almost see the dizzying, stockpiling of fills (Family Dynamics Prologue) but it’s never at the expense of beautiful, thoughtful, layered playing from Myele and from NYC-based pianist Matthew Sheens, local saxophonist Jake Baxendale and a truly international blend of players – from Kiwi connections (Adam Page and Mark de Clive-Lowe) to Australian (Ben Harrison) and American (Jason McMahon); virtuoso talent across the board.

And from beat displacement (Family Dynamics) to match the overarching themes of the record, of love and family and understanding your place in this world, through moody contemplation (Mortality) and music that skillfully, subtly builds in intensity (Madrid) this is the very embodiment of a musical journey.

Deep into the record you’ll hear some of the very best modern jazz of recent times across a trio of standout compositions (Pencarrow, Resilience and the closing, title track). Pencarrow has Manzana moving from fusion-funk to a syncopated swing, allowing space for the horns to make their mark. Resilience has the piano eventually tying itself in knots which is then skillfully loosened by a stop-start solo from Manzana which is more a case of a piano/drum duet than anything. It’s hypnotic, a whirlwind.

And then the acknowledgment of theme – the tying together – in the closing track. It sounds as much like mid-70s Santana as the Coltrane album that seems to have sparked it. There’s something very big-band-sweep about the way Manzanza plays and arranges for small-combo. The very best of both worlds.

There’s a lot of great stuff in this record. Myele’s best. And a real statement in composition, producing and bandleading – for it’s not ever a solo record, more a bandleader’s record. The playing – from everyone involved – is rich, emotional and rewarding.
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June 27, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

WWE Fastlane 2019: DVD

Fastlane 2019

WWE

Madman

On the road to Wrestlemania another of the stops was Fastlane – and there was obvious business to do here, break up the Miz and Shane so they could fight at the big show, get Becky Lynch back into the title-run, develop story lines… Read More »

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June 26, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Joshua Redman Quartet: Come What May

Joshua Redman Quartet

Come What May

Nonesuch

In the two decades since the Joshua Redman Quartet last recorded together their leader has gone in all directions as featured soloist, cameo artist and collaborator (The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau) working with tone and timbre to shape his playing and songwriting. Read More »

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June 26, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Brad Mehldau: Finding Gabriel

Brad Mehldau

Finding Gabriel

Nonesuch

I was so hooked on the early Meldhau work – mostly trio jazz and sometimes some solo piano. And then he toured NZ with his trio and it was…I dunno…it was just boring. It was just exactly as it was meant to be I suppose and yet I somehow wanted more.

He won me back over with his extrapolations of Radiohead songs and other covers in both a solo and trio setting and then he’s been nothing but interested ever since, crossing over into classical, touching on keyboard-funk, pumping out jazz – on his own and in collaboration with many modern greats. He’s prolific and it’s always exciting.

Now, of course, I crave a return visit from him.

But in the wake of that there’s almost too much to unpack in Finding Gabriel, a biblical tale that stops by to comment on the modern American political landscape, featuring spoken-word pieces, brittle electro funk, the wordless vocals of the wondrous Becca Stevens and Kurt Elling (Make It All Go Away), the scurrying percussion of Mark Guiliana (The Prophet Is A Fool), Beach Boys-styled harmony vocals arriving on the back of Zappa-esque fusion (Proveb of Ashes)…I’m starting to feel like Stefon from SNL’s Weekend Update should be listing the attributes on display across this technicolour dreamboat album.

Yes, you’ll hear Mehldau do what he does best – it’s just that that has now stretched from solo and small combo piano settings to expansive orchestration, to the jamming jazz-funk energy of his Taming The Dragon project and beyond.

And here, in fury, funk and frankness it arrives all together.

Which will be far too much for many to handle. But it’s kinda dazzling and enriching in its busy throb.

By the time of the closing title track I think more of Prince’s The Rainbow Children than to Herbie Hancock or Jarrett or any of the names you might once have reached for as a touchstone for Brad Mehldau.
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June 25, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Matangi / Maya / M.I.A: DVD

Matangi / Maya / M.I.A

Director: Steve Loveridge

Madman

The Amy Winehouse documentary was devastating – of course. But what was amazing about it – as is the case with documentary subjects that came of age across the last two decades – was the gathered footage. Home videos, goof-offs, early social media… Read More »

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June 24, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Tenderlonious: Hard Rain

Tenderlonious

Hard Rain

a22

Ed “Tenderlonious” Cawthorne clearly doesn’t want to be thought of as one thing only, so very soon after the wonderful Shakedown album with his 22archestra he is back with solo effort, Hard Rain. Read More »

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June 24, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn: The Transitory Poems

Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn

The Transitory Poems

ECM

Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, two of the finest pianists of the current crop, first worked together back in the early and mid-00s as part of Roscoe Mitchell’s band – this album marks their first work together as a duo.

If you love/d the Herbie Hancock/Chick Corea album or any of Keith Jarrett’s solo piano explorations then you’ll want to sign up for this – even if you’ve not previously heard Iyer or Taborn. If you know their work already this is a no-brainer.

Recorded in Budapest at the Liszt Academy in 2018 – and released just now – this features a set of two-piano improvisations and spontaneous compositions. Look again at the album’s title – for that is the best description of the music contained here. Or barely contained. It floats off into the ether, it exists in the moments while you’re hearing it – from fast and furious (Shake Down) to nocturnal/crepuscular motifs (Sensorium) as well as tributes along the way to some of their influences (from pianists Geri Allen and Cecil Taylor to sculptor and painter Jack Whitten).

The nine-minute S.H.A.R.D.S might be the centerpiece of the album, its forward movement taking the listen through various styles of playing with such subtle transitions that it’s almost the musical equivalent of a train ride, the listener staring out a window – hearing the soundtrack to imaginary vistas.

Clear Monolith, yet another tribute to a pianist (this time Muhal Richard Abrams) has moments of silence being punctured by strong, clear chord choices. It’s impossible to tell which player is playing – there’s always a micro-space that allows you to hear and feel two pianos, but the musicians work together as if one pianist.

Recent visitor to New Zealand’s shores, Francesco Turrisi, is another obvious touchstone.

Gorgeous music, late-night reveries, the waft and drift of the piano, the merging of the hands and minds of two creative geniuses.
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June 23, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Koizilla: Warped (ep)

Koizilla

Warped (ep)

trace / untrace

Though I’m not really a gamer, I was a fan of Crash Bandicoot. (Wasn’t everyone?) Now I’m sure you could dig Koizilla’s latest EP anyway, but being a Crash fan (past or present) will provide extra special memories, for this is a reimagining/re-arranging of six of the pieces of music from Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped – a Sony PlayStation game that was all the rage a couple of decades ago.

Koizilla is a psych-surf, garage-rock band that takes its name from the mid-00s animated series Avartar: The Last Airbender. And where previously they’re written their own tunes across three other EPs, here it’s about a playful, quirky gimmick of recontextualising video-game music. The muscle and movement of the band’s music transcends any notion of mere gimmickry however.

Joining brothers Josh (drums) and Zac Nicholls (guitar) and Connor Blackie (bass) for the Warped EP is new member Hillary Faul (flute, organ). Her use of flute in particular gives a near-prog sound to some of the work here – particularly when combined with Zac’s guitar work on the opening, title track.

This Dunedin-based band conjures musical motifs that might make you think of some of Frank Zappa’s work – it’s almost like they’ve taken aspects of his early Mothers and doo-wop pastiches and combined them with the ‘serious’ jazz-rock of his mid-70s period. Another obvious touchstone is the instrumental moments of Devo which feels strangely prescient given the Josh Mancell-composed music of Crash Bandicoot was released via Mutato Muzika, a production company formed by Mark Mothersbaugh.

There’s something instantly fun about this project. But these are some serious music-makers. And from the garage-rock groove of Tomb Time through the ska-punk bounce of Midnight Run to the four-on-the-floor party vibe of Future Frenzy’s backbeat the band nails all and any possible styles. Somehow it feels like contemporary surf-rock and prog all at once, and those two genre-feels would ordinarily seem like a clash or just unlikely. Here, through great playing and a commitment to the project it never comes over as wink-wink cleverness, just great musicality.
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June 21, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

David Crosby: Here If You Listen

David Crosby

Here If You Listen

BMG

In one of the great – and knowing – Simpsons cameos, David Crosby appears as himself (“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”) awarding the Be Sharps with a Grammy. Barney, Springfield’s town drunk declares Crosby his hero. “Thanks, you like my music?” asks a sincere Crosby. And just ahead of one of his trademark belches Barney screeches incredulously, “You’re a musician!?”  A fair question in 1993 (and 1983 – and 2003). Maybe all that Crosby had by then was his back-story, which was killer. And because it didn’t kill him, only his career, you could thinly hope that one day it may make him stronger.

Well we first saw that day with 2014’s surprise CROZ. That was one heck of a comeback and I knew there was something special about it at the time – but really it’s a signpost, the start of something. There’s been three further albums – which means over half of Crosby’s solo discography has arrived in the last half decade.

He’s getting stronger by the album too. It’s beyond remarkable.

Across 2016’s Lighthouse, 2017’s Sky Trails and now Here If You Listen (from late 2018) Crosby has been refining the band and his music, building though each time with such a creative outpouring, such offerings from the muse. Snarky Puppy’s bassist Michael League has been crucial across all three albums. Joining him and Croz here is keyboardist Michelle Willis and guitarist/vocalist Becca Stevens. The quartet has appeared on a track or two across the last albums but now there’s no further help – no horns or outside backing vocalists. They are the heavenly choir in and of themselves; they provide the sparse, subtle, lithe musical accompaniment.

It’s a band. But a band in support of Crosby’s vision.

He’s a month or two of 78 (“I’ve been thinking of dying/how to do it well/how to stand up and face it/or just lie how I fell/it’s a matter of honour”) and he sounds – vocally – as good as he has and – lyrically – as wise as ever.

Those tunings, those chordal shifts. If we can’t have Joni Mitchell making new music why not one of her earliest champions. Crosby even closes this album off with a second crack at Ms. Mitchell’s Woodstock. It’s there to remind us, also, of how he’s one of the last of that breed; the idealistic kids that went to Woodstock, that have been fighting their version of a freedom-march (even if mostly in their heads) ever since.

What’s important here is that Croby, just seven albums into a solo career – but likely with another just around the corner at the rate he’s going – is making the best music of his lifetime. And when you’ve been in The Byrds and Crosby/Stills/Nash/(Young) that’s hopefully saying something. When you’ve written Cowboy Movie and Guinnevere and Almost Cut My Hair and had a hand in Eight Miles High you’ve arguably done enough already. But here he rivals James Taylor at his best (I Am No Artist,), Jaco-era Joni (Buddha On A Hill) and reimagines Jackson Browne through those slippery jazz-folk leanings of his own earliest post-CSN work (Your Own Ride).

Here If You Listen feels like the real 50th Anniversary of Astral Weeks – in some spiritual sense. Or a palinode of sorts to his own mercurial 1971 solo debut, If I Could Only Remember My Name…
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June 20, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

David Cross: Oh, Come On

David Cross

Oh, Come On

Comedy Dynamics, A Nacelle Company

I’ve been listening to David Cross stand-up CDs since I was first sent a review-sample back in the early 00s. That was on Sub Pop and was fascinating to me for some reason – also I recognised Cross’ face and voice from his various cameos at that point and what I knew of Mr. Show. It was a penny-drop moment – and though stand-up comedy CDs (or LPs) are a tough ask these days I’ve always felt that Cross was best-served by the medium. Sure, he has Netflix (and other network) specials and before that DVDs…

But his commitment to the live album based around a stand-up show is impressive. And though I’ve not heard every single Cross live record I’ve heard plenty of them – and they’s usually good.

His latest is taken from his 2018 tour, and there is a version available as a filmed document. (Though I understand the film and the album are taken from different shows, covering the same material).

So here in Birmingham Cross enjoys going at Trump fans. He shows his great skill combining wit and absurdity with a “Too Soon?” joke that imagines something that hasn’t happened yet, following it up with a “Too Late?” joke – and I think it’s okay to spoil this one – it’s a reference to The Monkees – suggesting that when he heard that AIDS was handed down via the monkeys he hopes that it wasn’t Mike Nesmith; his favourite. It’s a daft joke on its own but as a follow-up from his Toon Soon bit and as a leap-off into the absurdism that Cross enjoys, in and around devestating political takedowns and savage observations of privilege (his own, amongst it) and hypocrisies in modern living, it’s a winner. One of many.

This show sizzles early on, as Cross delights in talking about his new baby and how as someone who comes later to fatherhood he doesn’t intend to bang on with a bunch of dad jokes…and then he does. But these are dad jokes you will not hear anywhere else: he calls his own daughter a cunt, he references the holocaust. It’s Cross as you’ve perhaps always known him – the surprise being that he is able to adapt his new life to his old comedic ways.

There’s a long bit in the middle about a couples colonic retreat. It’s mostly very good also – but maybe, just maybe, this is where the quality dips.

It’s a slight dip only. Cross is on fire here, as he has been across most of the last two decades. For every nauseating Alvin and the Chipmunks-styled pay-check he’s taken it hasn’t dimmed his on-stage rage as one of the finest stand-ups of recent years. (Technically it’s enabled it, and maybe not just fiscally). And this latest tour had sublime moments, from the scatalogical, juvenile and absurd through to profound, brutal and magical.

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June 19, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Jeff Beck – Still on the Run: DVD

Jeff Beck: Still On The Run

Director: Matthew Longfellow

Eagle Rock

Ask any guitarist – they’ll tell you Jeff Beck is one of the greatest. Many will tell you he is the greatest, certainly he’s peerless in terms of his quest for exploration and expression given he’s forever linked to his Yardbirds-colleagues Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Not for Jeff to just fall back into ‘playing the hits’ or constantly remastering and re-releasing a finite catalogue and tidying up previously unreleased live material. No, Beck would rather take years out, work on his cars, wait until he has something to say. Read More »

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June 19, 2019 by Simon Sweetman

Bill Stewart: Band Menu (feat. Walter Smith III & Larry Grenadier)

Bill Stewart

Band Menu (feat. Walter Smith III & Larry Grenadier)

Stewed Music/Bill Stewart

Despite playing on over a dozen albums by John Scofield, as well as key recordings by Pat Martino, Pat Metheny and Maceo Parker – among many others – Bill Stewart has balanced an in-demand clinician schedule with now 11 solo albums where he is the band-leader and often the main composer.

His latest features the killer trio of modern masters Larry Grenadier (bass) and Walter Smith II, (saxophones) with Stewart leading from the back.

It’s an often subtle affair, so much so that on the opening six-minute walk through the title track it takes some time for the musicians to really build and show some chops. It’s quiet virtuoso playing until Stewart starts to strike hard at the cymbals and lets a few tom-fills tumble and fla-boom.

Smith leads off with a nice melody on F U Donald (wonder who that could be about) before Grenadier’s bass line starts to throb and pulse and Stewart moves towards a funkier, harder edge in his playing, more of a back-beat beneath the shimmer of cymbals.

There’s exploration across the ballad-tempo of Re: Person I Knew where Stewart shakes his brushes across the brass-ware and over the snare as Grenadier’s striking bass-line is the early lead. When Smith enters its with a Coltrane-like authority to his waft.

Good Goat returns this trio to its safe-place of swinging funk. A good groove established and plenty of spit and swagger in the melodic phrasing from the sax but space for Stewart to really dig in and show some chop-playing.

Hair and Teeth has Stewart turning an almost Socca-styled hi-hat workout into a jazz feel as Smith ‘sore-throats’ the sax and then Grenadier and Stewart lock in so deep that it’s only the rhythm section that seems to matter.

Invocation’s lovely summery waft is pure open-venue late-night jazz balladry, Modren is busy, sharp playing – very Stanton Moore-meets-Mark Guiliana.

And the closer, Think Before You Think, again is almost deceptive in how great the playing is – how dynamic, sharp but never (too) showy.

This is an amazing modern jazz recording – top players just hitting it out of the park. But never showboating. A marvel. An album to enjoy as a whole, it’ll take you to a nice place somewhere, it’ll make wherever you are seem like the best place to be.  No surprise really when all three of the players here have made their living and life as three of the best sidemen in recent years and all have experience as leaders as well.
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