BRAD MEHLDAU — Your Mother Should Know : Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles (review)

BRAD MEHLDAU — Your Mother Should Know : Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles album cover Live album · 2023 · Post-Fusion Contemporary Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
js
Much like some other aging jazz musicians such as Bill Frisell and John Scofield, Brad Mehldau seems to be heading in a somewhat nostalgic direction these days. His previous album saw him exploring the prog rock of his youth, and now his latest, “Your Mother Should Know”, goes back a bit further and into the musical reign of The Beatles. If you have ever heard Brad’s lengthy improv on “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, then you will know that he can pull things never imagined before from the simplest pop tune, but this Beatles tribute is not that extravagant. Instead, on this album Mehldau more or less stays with the original tune, both in melody and in the general length of the song, but what he inserts while exploring these songs makes for some fascinating listening.

The handful of Beatle songs that jazz musicians like to play are on here, particularly “Here, There and Everywhere”, a song well on its way to becoming a ‘standard’, but there is also some sillier stuff that one wouldn’t expect a jazzer to touch. In the well written pamphlet that accompanies this CD, Brad explains how he found it interesting that The Beatles would often dive into older styles of pop and vaudeville. In that style Brad gives us, “Your Mother Should Know”, and an Art Tatum and Ellington influenced version of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. On, “I Saw Her Standing There”, Mehldau digs into his boogie-woogie chops, something he is not usually known for.

“I am the Walrus” may be the artiest art pop song ever, and a real challenge for a solo piano player, but Brad handles it well by mostly sticking to the structure of the original with some interesting embellishments added. Yes, this album is kind of ‘cute’ and nostalgic, but there is enough true artistry and imaginative changing of harmonies and tone colors to make it interesting to even the hardcore jazz fan, or someone who just likes creative contemporary music. A hallmark of Brad’s playing is that he rarely gives into gratuitous flash, every note he plays counts and is well considered, and that is why he is so adept with pop material as pop songs are often composed under similar constraints.
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