This is one of those little big bands, a seven piece that doesn’t believe it can’t also be an orchestra if it chooses to do so. There’s a limited range of voices on here (reeds plus accordion and piano in the main with no brass) and you would have thought that might lead to some restraint. But no. The ensemble moments are full blooded, such as on the opening romp, Glad Day, and the well supported solo passages insidiously worm their way into your attention and before you know it a stripped down backing behind the solo has marched to the front of the hall, metaphorically speaking, and it’s a full screen performance again. Blues For Terenzi does this to perfection, building up from an alto sax solo, by the end it’s a full voice march being directed around the parade ground to display the quality of Westbrook’s writing and arranging.
An argumentative reading of Billy Strayhorn’s Johnny Come Lately develops into an
accordion/alto duel (not a phrase that suffers from over use) with the
accordion both filling in the landscape and pushing the saxes on as the piece
slides between familiar Ellingtonia and something just a little left of where
you expect it to be.
Kate’s voice makes its first appearance on Yellow Dog, a new version of a song from
2019. A martial drum beat provides the foundation for accordion swirls after a
French Fashion whilst Kate intones a grim song of rats and snakes and a
post-apocalyptic vision of a sun scorched land with a north-eastern reference
in the lines “No one will whistle Blaydon Races, For a dead Geordie lad.” She
channels a growling Marlene Dietrich on Black
Market, a Brechtian song from the 1948 film A Foreign Affair. The music is more free-association than what has
gone before with only Kate’s growl and snarling voice and Vergette’s bass
holding it all together amidst the cabaret accordion and various whistling.
There’s more of that insidious, sliding, sax playing on Doll’s House; there’s elements of swing
too, all anchored by Vergette’s bass. Again, it’s in the mood of Brecht/Weill
before it breaks out into a multi-instrumental frenzy with the frenzied saxes
duelling and duo-ing; the accordion holding it all together with a simple repeated
riff. My Lover’s Coat opens with a
delicate solo piano, all angles, like a pastoral reading of a Monk solo and
that mood persists. It’s a surreal love song from a lover spelling out the
letters L,O,V,E across the earth so that they are visible to an astronaut lover
flying overhead; a joyful image and the band rolls cheerfully along behind
Kate. The most uplifting moments on the album with the saxes giving full voice
behind her. My Pale Parasol is a
revisit of a track on the 2005 album, art
Wolf that they toured up north, at least as far as Darlington, in the mid
noughties. The Alpine imagery plays out over a swirling and swooping alto and
restrained piano punctuation. The lines and the music match perfectly as Kate
sings ‘A great glacier before me, Alpine Swifts above, I shall live forever, An
image of love.’
Gas,
Dust, Stone is a return to space, though less
optimistically than on My Lover’s Coat, as the protagonist is now
floating in space with nothing but Gas,
Dust, Stone for company. The title is repeated with Kate’s voice falling, more
resignedly, on Stone with every
reading. A stuttering, longing sax solo comes in after the vocals to give
another voice to the absence and loneliness before an escape into higher
registers but the weight of York’s drums add gravitas to proceedings and
prevent full flight. Dancing accordion and sax combine wonderfully to lead us
into a closing full band section, where, once again, this Band of Bands sounds
a bigger beast than it is.
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