Pasa Tempos Music by Tweedy and the Vijay Iyer Trio

VIJAY IYER TRIO Break Stuff (ECM) Placid, dark piano tones open “Starlings,” the first of a dozen tunes on Vijay Iyer’s newest album, and his first with ECM with his 11-year-old trio. This is a real unit, with Marcus Gilmore’s dynamic drumbeats and cymbal-shimmers and Stephan Crump’s spare bass thrummings thoroughly embedding in the mix led by pianist Iyer. The long intro to “Chorale” is appropriately stately and natty, but it also has an air of suspense; then the trio breaks into a much knottier, densely creative groove. This track and the album’s three bird-themed tunes (”Geese” and “Wrens” are the two besides the album’s first song) had their origins in a suite Iyer presented — in collaboration with 19 instrumentalists and the novelist Teju Cole — after winning a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. On “Diptych,” the leader treads fascinating harmonic territories that include discrete melodic statements; small, tangled clusters; clear multinote arpeggios; and occasional minimalistic moments against Crump’s busy thumping and Gilmore’s incessant, off-kilter rhythm. “Hood,” complex, open, and hypnotic, is reminiscent of Terry Riley’s In C . It’s fascinating listening to any one of the three musicians, but their totality is close to transcendent. The title track is a good place to pay attention to the album’s seemingly quizzical theme. As Iyer says in the liner notes, “A break in music is still music: a span of time in which to act.” While not always accessible — the relationships here to blues and swing can be quite abstract — Break Stuff is physical, intuitive, intellectual, and emotional. That is, it’s exciting.— Paul Weideman

TWEEDY Sukierae (dBpm/ANTI-Records) For the average kid, the most excitement to be reasonably expected from take-your-child-towork day might involve xeroxing his or her buttocks on the company photocopier. That’s probably because the average kid doesn’t have Jeff Tweedy for a father. Last year, the leader of Wilco released an album of original material called Sukierae , which features his eighteen-year-old son, Spencer, on drums. The side project is called Tweedy and both members are in concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Thursday, March 26. The father-son partnership seems a fruitful one, so far producing 20 songs on a double album. The elder Tweedy has said that to prepare for this project, he wrote and recorded about 90 songs. The ones that made the cut are reliable — if not groundbreaking — drawing more on the frontman’s rock chops than on his folk ones. The younger Tweedy proves able to keep up with his seasoned forebear, drumming with purpose. The track “World Away,” which is rooted in a 7/4 time signature — dreaded by many drummers — serves as an early proving ground for Spencer. In the next track, “Diamond Light Pt. 1,” his drumming becomes more frenetic, in contrast with his dad’s spaced-out vocals and parallel airy guitar line. Similar shifts in feel play out from song to song through to the album’s close, making this double recording well worth a listen in consecutive order, as was intended. — Loren Bienvenu