Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up, The Air is Different

Life, contra that Gump movie, is NOT like a box of chocolates. Because after a while you pretty much do know what you are going to get, for better or worse. However in the case of Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up's The Air is Different (482 Music 482-10719) I was not at all sure what I had gotten. A few listens later and I knew.

It's a disk of drummer Fujiwara's compositions, played by one heck of a band. The music is open-form contemporary improv-jazz by a crack outfit. There's a hit of rock, free and contemporary in a balanced mixage.

Two pretty big surprises here--one is that Fujiwara not only showcases his very contemporary and hip drumming, but he excels as a writer and bandleader. The music is substantial and the band has a definite sound to it.

The second surprise: though this is not my first time hearing trumpetist Jonathan Findlayson, it reaffirms that he is one hell of a player, a kind of post-Booker Little modernist of facility and imagination.

Brian Settles on tenor comes through as a pretty exceptional player too. Gruff and note-y or more quietly introverted, he sounds great here.

Mary Halvorson is a guitarist at the top of the new sound folks, with a very wide range of stylistic accomplishments, from the changes-based semi-trad sound to the wilding kind of sound artist to the rock tinge, she also sounds very good indeed.

Bassist Trevor Dunn goes far to make this band a success with exemplary ensemble and solo playing.

Finally, this album works very well because everyone is pulling together for a group sound. And that sound is one that stands out as exceptionally creative. This is only their second release, so if they can hang together I predict a big impact for them going down the road. As it is, they are very impressive already. Don't hesitate to get this one.

Eddie C. Campbell, Spider Eating Preacher

Old-school electric urban blues lives on at Delmark records. Eddie C. Campbell's Spider Eating Preacher (Delmark 819) is one of the latest and it gives you a nice hour of originals, classics and general good doings on this, his second for the label. There's some nice horn section riffing much of the time. Eddie plays a reverb-drenched Fender with the old feel.

It's the soul blues, as seen in things like a bluesy version of "Skin Tight," or the classic "Cut You Loose," and that's where he is coming from.

Eddie has a laid-back vocal style, in his own way, with a deceptively casual delivery that Jimmie Reed and Slim Harpo made such a signature part of their thing. Eddie doesn't sound like them, though. He sounds like himself.

He sounds so much like himself that it took me a few listens to get onto his wave length. After you live with it, it's a wave length to get with.

So, hey, here's a blues cat that's been too little exposed to the blues lovers out there. If you're looking for a new cat to dig that's doing it today, Eddie C. Campbell is a guy to hear.

Abandon Jalopy, Death & Joy

OK, we have Abandon Jalopy's second album today, Death & Joy (Studio Ear Bone). This is the name of the ongoing group project headed up by Blind Lemon's bassist, Brad Smith.

The album has some strong tunes, like for example "All the Way," which should find college station airtime. It's alt rock with a power pop veneer. Instrumentally it has a guitar-bass-keys-drums-vocals immediacy. It's about the songs, not much in terms of improvising, but that isn't the thing.

You listen and you get into it, generally speaking. The strong parts of the program get you liking it, but there are some songs that don't have quite as much going. They go by without pain or consternation and you get to another high point, so it all works out. Good effort and some definite winning moments.

John Lee Hooker, Cook with the Hook, Live 1974, DVD

Here we have some real John Lee Hooker live at an outdoor rock fest of some sort in 1974--more specifically, held at a landfill in Gardner, Massachusetts. It was originally broadcast on local television, apparently, and has been mouldering in limbo until now. It has just been released as a DVD, Cook with the Hook (MVD Visual 5302D).

It's a 45 minute set recorded onto black and white videotape in a rough-and-ready fashion. The sound sometimes suffers a bit from mixing glitches and occasional balance issues, but it is overall quite decent considering.

John holds forth with a bit of his signature guitar. His band is quite serviceable and pretty typical of the period. It looks like John's son is on lead guitar and then there is a pretty solid rhythm section.

John runs through some of the big hits, "Serves You Right to Suffer," "Boom Boom," etc., and then launches into a very long boogie with vamps and John's vocal riding on top with a gospel-soul-blues exortation. This goes on mesmerizingly and no doubt was something the hippies could groove on. They generally do. After an encore of more boogie, it is all over. John fades back into history. But for 45 minutes he comes alive on videotape for us once again, the master that he was, and is.

The Wrong Object Recording New Album--Need Your Help to Get it Out!

The Wrong Object is a very good prog-fuze outfit (see reviews on this blog) and they need your help to cover the costs of recording, mixing and mastering their new studio album.

If you can spare a few bucks you'll be helping them out a great deal. Go to http://www.rockethub.com/projects/9245-the-wrong-object-s-new-studio-album for details and to send them something.

Thea Neumann, Lady & the Tramps

Thea Neumann sings with nuance. A good rhythmic sense. Embellishments that fit. Great pitch control. And personality. Her album Lady & the Tramps (Rawlco) gives you a nice assortment of standards and originals. It's Thea and a good piano trio with some guests and occasional horn section punctuations.

It's pretty firmly in the jazz mainstream camp, nicely so. "In Walked Bud" works well with the lyrics. "Vancouver" shows that Thea can write a very engaging ballad. Gillian Welch's "Dear Someone" gets a bell-beautiful rendition. "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" is, well, not made overly cute, which is sometimes a fateful, fatal temptation for singers when they do it, at least in the lounge lizard world. Not here.

Great vocalist, simple but very effective arrangements, good mix of songs. She should be widely appreciated and this CD shows you how that might be.

Hendrik Meurkens, Gabriel Espinosa, Celebrando

Brazilian jazz is not new age, not smooth jazz. New age & smooth jazz are often vulgar corruptions of Brazilian jazz, combined with an elevator music mentality. That original heat-in-mellowness that continues to energize samba-bossa jazz has ultimately nothing but a superficial relationship to the smooth and new age bastardizations that came after.

So with the Hendrik Meurkens/Gabiel Espinosa album Celebrando (Zoho 201204) there is a mellowness, sure. But this is the real thing. Hendrik is a first-rank harmonica player. Gabriel Espinosa plays bass and sings, teaming in this latter with Allison Wedding, who sounds quite good in the wordless bag. They are joined by a very hip and appropriate band who can get in the groove and flex the time so that it gently or not-so-gently swings samba-style.

It's an arranged sort of music with room for nice soloing--of course Hendrik on harmonica, Anat Cohen sounding very limber and lithe on clarinet and tenor, Jim Seeley on a nicely brandished trumpet and fluegel, Misha Tsiganov well-represented on piano and Rhodes. Antonio Sanchez and Mauricio Zottarelli share the drum duties. Both provide that all-important swung samba style.

The songs are originals by various members of the band for the most part and they are quite melodic and well-constructed. If this is a post-CTI sort of Brazo-jazz, it is a well done version and it is not in any way formulaic.

In short this is a Brazo-jazz winner. I am glad to have to hear again!