A jazz album I picked effectively at random at the library.
ALERT
I’m still a very casual jazz listener, so my vocabulary and exposure aren’t built up around it. These opinions might be very pedestrian
Song notes
- “Stolen Moments“‘s solos feature a lot of repeated motifs in ascending or descending keys, wandering purposefully. The slight discordance with which the track ends after its nice harmonic swings is a neat note.
- “Hoe-Down”, unsurprisingly starts with a bright, upbeat, brassy little riff before sliding into its jazz. It leans into the chaos you might imagine on the dance floor of such a hoe-down.
- “Cascades” is aptly named with the runs the saxophone does.
- “Yearnin’” has a rising section that hits almost discordant notes before hitting a comfortable harmonic stride that feels like the yearnin’ has been rewarded, then delves into some more complex chromaticism. The swinging back and forth does a good job of conveying the swings a relationship might go through. There’s one note that… I get it. Yearnin’, and all, but the shrillness of that long note was a little grating.
- “Butch and Butch“‘s best part, in my opinion, is when the twin saxophones play together at the end. They feel so playful!
- “Teenie’s Blues” sounds like it has a brief motif of “Old MacDonald” in it??
General thoughts
- I quite like the energy this album carries.
- I feel like the amount of blues displayed on the “blues-jazz” spectrum here is just about perfect.
- Maybe it’s because I’m a novice, but I’m not really grabbed by the harshness of jazz. The big stings, the long, single notes, the punctuated silences in a solo. I don’t mind discordance and chromatic notes. I do get it from a technical and artistic perspective, how these things can draw attention or convey feeling. I guess it’s just not what I show up for.
- Regardless, I enjoyed it! “Stolen Moments” really seems to be the strongest track.