Post-Everything Jazz; Nick Cave; Nebula's NonStop Hell Ride
Two contemporary offerings of fairly "authentic," non-uptown, post-everything jazz. First is the latest outing by the Pyramid Trio, led by trumpeter Roy Campbell, who's probably the best going these days, carrying on the tradition of Don Cherry among others. Campbell also plays in Other Dimensions in Music, as does bass player William Parker. He also plays in Parker's large ensemble, the Little Huey Orchestra, and these two have forged a musical brotherhood that goes back to 1978, when they met during the days when the loft scene was still going at full bore. These guys are kind of the carriers-on of that tradition of improvised jamming with a distinctly nonmainstream frame of reference.
Obviously being in three groups of some distinction, Campbell is a versatile musician, but even though he describes the Pyramid Trio as being "about world music with a touch of jazz," you really won't notice that much difference between the seven ethnically tinged pieces here and the primal skronking workouts of Other Dimensions. These guys may be flying solely on their own fuels but they seldom?if ever?play it "straight." If anything I would compare this stuff to such 70s late-night seance-holders as Ahmed Abdullah and early David Murray.
"Malcolm, Martin and Mandela" is a standout track featuring a great bass riff from Parker that propels this to an almost Art Ensemble of Chicago level of funkiness about the time they were beginning their "world music" phase (around the time of Third Decade). It's great stuff, with trumpet as the main instrumental voice, and Campbell is an incredibly adept purveyor of melodic phrasing that really carries a tune home (the big difference between him and a lot of other pretenders who skronk along soullessly and seldom produce anything "memorable"). I would stack this up against any other "free"/improv work of the past 20 years without reservation. Campbell even follows in the Cherry tradition by jamming on Cherry's fave?and Miles Davis' least fave?instrument, the "pocket trumpet." Muted sounds make up half of "Imhotep," while the other half is Freddie Hubbard moods indigo. The Pyramid Trio also has an excellent drummer in Hamid Drake, who really drives the riffing of Campbell and Parker with a rumble-in-the-jungle that ain't no mere clip-clop.
Speaking of trio records, the new Tim Berne album, The Shell Game, ain't bad either. Part of Thirsty Ear's ongoing "blue" series?which so far has produced nothing but shimmering results?this record features saxophonist Berne accompanied by drummer Tom Rainey and Craig Taborn on keyboards/electronics. The addition of Taborn marks this as a postmodern experiment by default, but fortunately the electronic boogity-boo doesn't usurp the jazz intent of the LP. As an instrumentalist, Berne is a capable improviser, as the flurry of notes on tracks like "Twisted/Straight Jacket" proves. Sometimes this verges into almost Mahavishnu territory thanks to the rolling Bitches Brew-influenced keyboards of Taborn. Otherwise the polymorphous cloud of electro-clank with twinges of jazz-blat puts this somewhere in the category of the albums William Hooker made for Homestead in the mid-90s (Radiation, etc.). In any event, it's not a bad thing to be submerged in.
Joe S. Harrington
I prefer it when the storyteller immerses himself so deeply in the tale he is recounting that fact becomes indistinguishable from fiction, reality and fantasy blur into one. Nick Cave's songs are inhabited by artifice and surreal creatures?God, "a guy with plastic antlers," the apostles, dead wives?yet they never cease being believable. Cave sings with such obvious relish, and such an instinctive grasp of when to testify and when to shut the fuck up, that all characters burst into sudden, intoxicating life. Or death, as it may take them.
That's my first point. Cave is a master of his art: he makes the imagined real. When we last heard from Cave, at the time of 1997's The Boatman's Call, we had both hoped and feared he was turning himself into a more soulful Sinatra for the 21st century. The piano-led torch song "Into My Arms" was proof enough of this. Cave is too smart and subtle to be led down any alley, however attractively presented. No More Shall We Part retains more of his vigor and swaggering humor of old than in 1997, as songs like the tempestuous "Oh My Lord" show, the violin wailing up a gale of emotion. "As I Sat Sadly by Her Side" might seem to be a straightforward love song, mixed in with a few quiet words of religious import, but it has a smart little turn at the end that keeps the listener guessing as to exactly where Cave's character fits in.
Also, Sinatra would never have been so bold as to so thoroughly mock, and spitefully pull apart, cherished American small-town values the way Cave does on the brilliantly cruel "God Is in the House." Here he manages the neat trick of simultaneously recalling Dr. Seuss, James Stewart and Doonesbury as he spits out the words, "Homos roaming the streets in packs/Queer bashers with tire-jacks/Lesbian counterattacks/That stuff is for the big cities/Our town is very pretty," before nearly giving up in disgust. The meter of the rhyme is jaw-droppingly oblique, the violin solo peerless.
During his concerts of the past few years, Cave has cut a romantic, solitary figure at the piano: lighting cigarettes between songs, fumbling through lyric sheets. He was perfectly complemented by Bad Seed and Dirty Three leader Warren Ellis?a wild man on violin, back to the audience, wrenching passion from his instrument, hurling great arcs of phlegm into the air, stamping his feet. The pair would duet together on an almost jazz-eccentric encore of the Birthday Party's "Dead Joe," Cave's hair flailing as of old as he thumped the keys. The pair?and yes, as talented as Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld and company are, No More Shall We Part is most definitely Cave and Ellis' baby?learned much from those live outings. This record is a towering achievement, even for artists with their heritage.
On The Boatman's Call Cave discovered God, albeit the vengeful God of the Old Testament. The album thus neatly complemented the previous year's darkly humorous collection, Murder Ballads. The new album is better than both, and recalls both?most obviously on the violin-led icy cold revenge fantasy "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" and "We Came Along This Road." Maybe you should forget God. Death is in the house, particularly when Cave's characters start examining their feelings of love and despair and betrothal. "Hallelujah" sounds stark and unsettling, just the pure voices of the McGarrigle sisters calling out the lament, "Twenty pretty girls to carry them down/And 20 deep holes to bury them in." The women return to add support on the doom-laden final song, "Darker with the Day," Cave pulling his usual trick of fitting in too many words for the slow, almost sepulchral music: one long list of people to hate, and flowers to smell.
Everett True
In this latter category, Nebula is king. As this new album proves, their deity-like stature within the movement is justified. Charged is quite simply an ass-kicker all the way throughout?a desperate-sounding caterwaul that combines the jet-fueled pace of Raw Power with the swampy depths of Blue Cheer and the best grunge bands. Recording for Sub Pop?who are more or less the catalysts of the movement in postmodern terms?Nebula are of course no strangers to the swamps. On this album, the bluesy riffs may be simplistic, but the level of intensity is primal and the band is totally "together" on even their looser extrapolations. As far as post-everything stoner blues goes, Charged might be the overachieving pinnacle of the genre (that includes even Monster Magnet's experiments).
The opening stompdown, "Do It Now," is Hellacopterean anthem-rock that literally explodes out of the box. They pay homage to "Train Kept a-Rollin'," which is surely their right, being descendants of the same tradition. "Beyond" starts out with a Blue Cheer intro before stampeding into a neatly carved heavy metal riff a la ZZ Top. As I've been saying for a long time, the rock fans of this new generation look back at all manifestations of aggressive hard rock?60s, 70s, 80s?as punk-by-proxy just by dint of it having guitars (an anomaly in the digitized Britney Spears era). That's why legitimate "hard rock" bands nowadays acknowledge the influence of both Kiss and the New York Dolls. That's the tradition Nebula falls into, with a lot of West Coast "stoner" attitude thrown in. But Nebula's coming at it from the megalomaniacal hallucinations of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and Monster Magnet, as opposed to the tripping-on-my-own-shoelaces splat of Nirvana and Love Battery.
"Travelin' Man's Blues" could be a riff off an old Jethro Tull album. "Instant Gravitation" shows their acute riff marksmanship once more, and places their music firmly in the tradition of such other savage power trios as Mountain (and way better than Grand Funk). "This One" starts with the riff from David Bowie's "Janine" before submerging into more kozmik blues. "Ignition," true to its name, is a spark plug of, once again, Hellacopters proportions, with some seedy space wank thrown in. "Shaker" is more Blue Cheer. "Goodbye Yesterday" starts out with some Led Zep acoustic-strum as the band angles through their usual revo-rhetoric before bursting into another blues hump. There's a Stooges quality to this one also that marks it as an ass-busting classic.
But the best cut is the grand finale, the aptly titled "All the Way," which is a thunderstruck swampfest of Sabbathean proportions?a fitting end to this nonstop hell ride. Let it burn.
Joe S. Harrington