Baum for the soul
Flutist’s latest offering an alluring, colourful mix of sounds inspired by South Asia
IN THIS LIFE
The Jamie Baum Septet +
(Sunnyside)
★★★★
New York flutist/composer/bandleader Jamie Baum has outdone herself with In This Life, the latest for her little big band.
Inspired by several trips to South Asia, Baum has crafted a program of alluring, richly colourful music for a medium-sized group filled with distinctive players.
The disc’s triumphal opener, Nusrat, evokes the passionate high-energy whirl of Sufi devotional music, abetted by Dan Weiss’s tabla flurries. Ear-catching solos by Baum, intriguing trumpeter Amir ElSaffar and guitarist Brad Shepik erupt from the ensemble. That track is a tribute to the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and In This Life includes two pieces by Khan, effectively brought into the jazz fold. The Game is a driving but layered piece featuring sitar-like playing by Shepik and ElSaffar and Baum at their most spirited. Khan’s Sweet Pain is a plaintive meditation that sets the stage for a grand, stark piano passage from John Escreet.
Other tracks on the CD veer in other directions. Monkeys of Gokarna Forest is fast and quirky, girded by the swinging tandem of bassist Zack Lober and drummer Jeff Hirschfeld. The grooving takes a funkier turn on Ants And Other Faithful Beings. Both of these tracks find Escreet ratcheting up the tension with dynamic, dissonant playing.
There are exceptionally pretty tracks as well. The Meeting is delicate and finely arranged, and it allows Montreal-raised, Brooklynbased bassist Lober to step out. In Another Life, a bittersweet ballad with existential implications, and While We Are Here, a celebratory memorial piece written by Baum for her late cousin, are lyrical and moving.
The Jamie Baum quintet featuring Jane Bunnett plays Saturday, Nov. 30, at 7 and 9 p.m. at GigSpace (953 Gladstone Ave.). Admission per show is $20 at the door or by calling 613-729-0293.
Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen CROSSROADS
Eric Clapton Guitar Festival Featuring many guitar gods (Rhino Records)
★★★ 1/2
There are many reasons to be jealous of New Yorkers: great restaurants, great museums, great art galleries and great streets. The Big Apple is just one of those places where it all seems to be happening all the time and those of us who don’t live there miss out.
Eric Clapton’s third Guitar Festival is just another one of those unique to New York events. It was staged last April 13 and 14 in Madison Square Garden and featured a who’s who of guitar gods, from Clapton himself to Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’ and jazzman Kurt Rosenwinkel.
The two-day concert was on behalf of Clapton’s charity, the Crossroads Centre, on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
That many talented artists on the two-disc set is worth dropping the dime for. There is something for everyone, from good old fashioned blues licks to Rosenwinkel’s smokey guitar sound on the song Heavenly Bodies. The most unique piece is Jeff Beck’s rendition of the old Irish classic Mna Na Heireann.
The compilation is billed as a guitar festival, but there’s not a lot of instrumental only work, Rosenwinkel and Beck aside. That may irritate guitar purists, but since I’m not one, I liked the package.
Highlights for me: The Robert Cray Band’s Great Big Old House; Diving Duck Blues by Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’; and Clapton’s Tears In Heaven (I just love the song).
It’s also available on DVD and Bluray, making it one of those considerations as a Christmas stocking stuffer for the music fan with lots of technology.
Peter Robb, Ottawa Citizen
FOREVERLY
Billy Joe + Norah
(Warner)
★★★ 1/2
In their heyday, the Everly Brothers were two of the top bamboozlers of the country-folk world.
Their soft, sweet, almost sedate harmonies often made you forget they were actually singing about death, loneliness, and getting “baby out of jail.”
Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong and pop-jazz singer Norah Jones rectify this discrepancy with foreverly, a tribute to Don and Phil Everly’s 1958 classic, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, which in itself is an album of covers.
While his ’n’ her vocals are quiet and smooth, they’re usually filled with more emotion, twang and volume adjustments than their forefathers — thereby adding extra heft and, more importantly, intrigue to songs such as Lightning Express and Rockin’ Alone (In an Old Rockin’ Chair) and Down in the Willow Garden. (The strummy guitar arrangements on foreverly are also somewhat snappier and shufflier — accented with tinkling piano keys and mewling pedal steel or fiddle riffs.)
The only problem? Armstrong and Jones tend to stay too true to the Everly legacy and sing most of the lyrics together. (He only takes the lead on Barbara Allen, while Jones does the honours on I’m Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail.)
They could really do with more solo parts to make foreverly even livelier.
Sandra Sperounes, Postmedia News
SHANGRI LA
Jake Bugg
(Virgin EMI)
★★★ 1/2
Singer-songwriter Jake Bugg is supposed to be the “new voice of the British indie masses,” according to the Glasgow Evening Times.
But if you’re a close follower of Canada’s music scene, you’ll just think he sounds like a polished version of Edmonton expat and blues punk Michael Rault, who in turn sounds like South Park’s bratty fatso, Cartman. Bugg’s self-titled debut was only released last year — and nominated for Britain’s Mercury Music Prize — but the 19-year-old decided to rush his second album as a challenge to write even better tunes.
Did he succeed? Probably. Shangri La features more ambitious arrangements — bluesy guitar scribbles (All Your Reasons, Kingpin), stompy country-folk percussion (There’s a Beast and We All Feed It), rumbly bass lines (Messed Up Kids), organ sprinkles (Kitchen Table), and lightning-quick lyrics (Slumville Sunrise, What Doesn’t Kill You). Most of these work — though they don’t feel quite as gritty or real, or perhaps lived in, as his previous output. This could be the result of rushing the album, revving his delivery — Bugg’s singing gets sloppier at higher speeds — and/or Rick Rubin’s somewhat sterile production of the album. As such, Shangri La is a nice companion piece to Billie Joe + Norah’s foreverly.
Sandra Sperounes, Postmedia News FELLOW TRAVELERS
Shearwater
(Sub Pop)
★★★★
If covers are tributes, Fellow Travelers offers more immediate gratitude than most such collections.
The artists represented have all been touring partners of Shearwater. The binding concept is strong; the binding instrument — Jonathan Meiburg’s dramatic tension-and-release tenor — is even stronger.
A band that has always excelled at grace and rage, Shearwater easily finds other connecting threads between such tracks as Wye Oak’s sombre Mary is Mary and I Luv the Valley OH!!, which retains the menacing core of Xiu Xiu’s original while cleaning up the anarchic edges.
Coldplay (represented thanks to a handful of 2008 support dates) is the odd one out in terms of stature and mainstream appeal, and receives the most significant overhaul, with Hurts Like Heaven distilled to raindrop piano set against a gathering storm.