snobb
Some months before the release of this album there were first info/samples presented - it was snippets of ballads, played by such unorthodox avant garde jazz artists as New York downtown keyboardist Jamie Saft and drummer Bobby Previte, plus Carla Bley's regular bassist Steve Swallow, but what was even more shocking - there was vocal on these tracks, and the voice was no one else but punk-rock veteran Iggy Pop's.
RareNoise Records, founded almost a decade ago in London by two Italians, has always been oriented towards listeners with rock background searching for something new in avant-garde jazz, free improvs and similar scenes. Then, releasing the album recorded by the aforementioned jazz trio (even if quite an unorthodox one) adding three Iggy's vocal songs doesn't sound as freaky step. It would hardly attract any mainstream jazz fan, but RareNoise are obviously interested in different followers.
The bigger surprise with the album after it was already released, is that that music here is generally modern mainstream jazz (taking away the three vocal numbers). Since Iggy was planned as release's main star, lets start from him first.
All three songs with Pop's singing are ballads, not sentimental bluesy ones, but more of popular sort of modern urban balladry, characteristic for singing poets. Placed as fourth, ninth and twelfth songs among the instrumental jazz pieces, these songs work on a manner of raisins in a cake, some likes cake with raisins, others like just raisins, and there are some who like both. One things for sure, the addition of such different songs made whole album less monotonous.
As everyone familiar with who Iggy Pop is can expect, he doesn't sing any jazz here. First ballad ("Don't Loose Yourself")is a tuneful one, slightly recalling Jack Bruce's (or late Bowie's) songs of similar genre. Jazz trio play mostly in a manner of rock band here, Iggy sounds convincing and even demonstrates some fire. I can imagine a whole Iggy Pop album of such quality, and it possibly wouldn't be any wrong. Two other ballads unfortunately are more sentimental, and I wouldn't say Iggy's voice is the best choice for such kind of music. For me those left a mixed feeling of sadness and/or sorrow (I really like Leonard Cohen's songs, but he's been doing it much, much better).
Now, the rest of the album is ten more songs, and they are mostly great, if not excellent. Jamie Saft plays piano and organ here, mostly straight but demonstrates enough virtuosity and muscular energy to stay attractive all album long. In a combination with his "rock-like" manner, well crafted melodic compositions have all chances to attract far wider audience than just regular jazz fans.
Biggest album surprise are rhythm section. Pairing of original jazz bassist Swallow with far not so conformist drummer Previte was probably a risky business (ok, they already played together on previous Saft trio album), but here it works well and ... unexpectedly. If Swallow's deep physical groovy bass is's such unusual, I can hardly remember Previte playing with such delicacy and almost tender.
At the end of the day, what sounded at the very beginning as possible bad joke turned out to be a really great album. It just confirms once again how unpredictable true jazz is and - we love it for that.