Album review: Trish Delaney-Brown/The Game

The best of jazz vocal – and its perfect expression – is where the voice becomes an instrument, on par with frontline instruments such as the sax or trumpet. The finest jazz vocalists know this and go for it: Mark Murphy, Anita O’Day, Chet Baker, our own Vince Jones. Sinatra too – you can hear his delight when he worked with a small band.

One of our finest is Trish Delaney-Brown. A founding member of knockout vocal group The Idea of North, she comes alive in looser settings where the pure jazz singer in her can really come out.

Her new album The Game places her voice in the perfect setting – a dream-team ensemble also made up of the finest: Pianist Greg Coffin, Jeremy Sawkins on guitar and the rhythm section of Brendan Clarke and Nic Cecire. All the compositions are hers, bar the opener (the Bricusse-Newley gem ‘Pure imagination’) and a co-write with Dave Panichi, the lovely ballad ‘Ruby’.

The ballad can sometimes seem the domain of the jazz vocalist more than any other instrument (apologies to Johnny Hodges) and ‘Ruby’ is as good as they come – a gorgeous example of the form with Coffin’s telepathically simpatico piano painting notes behind Delaney-Brown’s vocal, then rising to a beautiful considered solo.

‘Birds’ is a wordless evocation of the murmuration of starlings. Sawkins’ gut-string solo here has that lovely balance of the classic and the modern that pervades the playing across the whole album, grounding it, yet giving it the wings this music needs. 

‘Face of The Bass’ is a strutting blues that features Clarke’s tough bass, breaking into a startling bass/vocal scat duet that leaps out before chilling back down to that bad (good) groove. Across The Game the vocal scat (in duet and solo) is exquisite, always intriguing, never empty histrionics.

The second ballad on The Game is the lovely ‘Simple Feast’. Here, as on the Bacharach-David flavoured title track ‘The Game’, Delaney-Brown’s sense of pop classicism is apparent – lyrics that write short stories, bittersweet, over a musical ground that is sophistication without empty virtuosity.

We go out on the almost-too-hip groove of ‘Wachagot’. A rolling piece of funk propelled by a jagged vocal riff, this one really shows drummer Cecire in his element – flawless touch, earthy sense of groove.

But it is Trish Delaney-Brown that shines over The Game. The album allows her perfect grasp of jazz singing a challenging range of expression through its multiplicity of textures – from blues to latin-funk to urbane pop and back home to the jazz and the jazz ballad. if you want to hear how good it gets, take a listen.

 

Trish Delaney-Brown’s website is https://www.tdbmusic.com.au

Album review: Dan Barnett – Walkin’ Shoes

There are contemporary big bands that lean too heavily on the side of tradition and there are contemporary big bands that eschew tradition almost entirely, throwing the jazz baby out with the Basie-water.

Dan Barnett’s sizzling band has always had a (stylishly shod) shoe in both camps – nodding nicely to the history and tradition of the big band while leaving much room for his stellar soloists and adventurous young arrangers; in other words leaving space for Jazz.

The band has ruled the roost at Balmain’s Unity Hall Hotel forever and Walkin’ Shoes – Barnett’s seventh album – captures all the life and spark of those great gigs and of vocalist/trombonist Barnett’s larger-than-life musical personality.

West Coast Cool is the mood for title track/opener ‘Walkin’ Shoes’– Gerry Mulligan’s purring perambulation – with Barnett leaving the melody behind for some wry rap/vocalese, even name-checking Robert de Castella along the way. Barnett’s vocal is a pleasure, by equal measure Tony Bennett or Mark Murphy, leaning either this way or that depending on the mood. The mood of Kelly Ottoway’s arrangement here is one that would even make Gerry Mulligan crack a rare smile.

The wryness continues in a blazing Tim Oram chart of Mose Allison’s ‘I Don’t Worry About a Thing’ – a song where the lyric response ‘ ‘Cause nothing’s gonna be alright’ pretty much sums up 2016 (the year sadly we lost the amazing Mr Allison). Barnett’s trombone solo here reminds us that he is not only a unique vocalist but a bitchin’ bone man.

Kelly Ottoway’s cheek-to-cheek arrangement of the lovely Jerome Kern ballad ‘I’m Old Fashioned’ shows the deeply traditional side of the band – the chart uses all the cinematic breadth of colour that only a big band can evoke. No fear of romanticism here.

From ballads to bop. The instrumental ‘Tin Tin Deo’ is a dizzying workout for the band’s Afro-Cuban chops. Growing out of a Greg Royal bass intro through a sharp Peter Locke piano solo, the tune culminates in an Andrew Dickerson (really, who else?) drum workout. A (grooving) highpoint!

French vocalist Tricia Evy lends her satin vocal to a number of tunes on Walkin’ Shoes. From the pure romance of Ellington’s ‘All Too Soon’ to the mambo of ‘Come Rain Or Come Shine’ – the latter teaming with Barnett’s vocal – she lights up each track with her sparkling style.

A surprise is Steve Miller’s ‘Fly Like An Eagle’ – a slice of the other West Coast Cool. Ottoway’s tough, 70s cop-show arrangement pushes the funk element of the band with nicely nasty solos from Bradford Child on tenor and Sam Rollings, guitar.

Tricia Evy takes us out with ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing…’ and ‘They Can’t take That Away From Me’, a perfect American Songbook one-two punch (a lover’s punch, of course). Both classic jazz staples, they are delivered here with freshness and style.

Freshness and style. That is as good a two-word review of Walkin’ Shoes as I can think of. Considering much big band writing – especially big band writing that tackles the classics – can be stodgy and stiflingly reverent, Dan Barnett and his arrangers and band have opened the window and let some fresh air in along with the noises of the street.

 

Walkin’ Shoes is available from Dan’s website – http://www.danbarnett.com.au

 

Published on http://australianjazz.net January 2017