darkprinceofjazz
Here is an usual McCoy Tyner Album, This is an album that escaped me for some time, I am not big on the Vocal Chorus thing, But a few albums like this have grown on me, Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice, and Max Roaches It's Time immediately come to mind, Inner Voices is somewhat similar, In that we have typical Post Bop style music augmented by a vocal chorus.
The music begins with a Piano Drums Duet "For Tomorrow" with the chorus and its a nice start, The next track "Uptown" is typical Tyner Post bop, with a hard charging Bass Line and slightly disjointed rhythm in the Thelonious Monk style, Some Brass backing, and No chorus.
The music is high quality Post Bop no doubt, and I don't think any Tyner fan would be disappointed with Inner Voices, and as fan myself, I sure wasn't, The best way to describe the chorus, it is used more in the same role as the brass, punctuating, stating themes etc... Track 3 has an interesting Acoustic guitar solo, I believe by Earl Klug, Very unexpected because of his laid back approach, It may seem as if it doesn't fit at first, I give Klug, or Tyner as the leader credit for being different, Some will find the Voices annoying no doubt, But I didn't think they ever got in the way.
Side 2 starts off with the voices stating the theme, then Ron Carter comes in with a nice lightly funky bass line, then it's typical Ron Carter, elastic, yet in the pocket, One thing about Ron Carter, especially those famous Miles Davis Plugged Nickel Sessions, His Elastic style really pushes the music, You could make an argument easily, That Ron Carter is the Most Important Jazz Bassist the last 50 years. Think about it, Especially the post bop styles after 1967, I mean every Bassist sounds like him now, just like every drummer sounds Like Tony Williams in some respect.
Inner voices turned out to be a great find, Not bad for a Dollar thrift store find.