That's Gonna Leave a Mark

Album Review

Matt Wilson puts his Arts & Crafts band with Terell Stafford and Gary Versace on the back burner for the time being to present his quartet featuring saxophonists/clarinetists Andrew D'Angelo and Jeff Lederer. The sound of this band is raw and edgy, but still retains the ability to swing hard and dig into deep blues or funk, and is one of the more expressive bands in post-modern jazz. D'Angelo, recovered from a well-publicized bout with a brain tumor, is playing with a reckless abandon rivaling Eric Dolphy — no mean feat. Wilson's drumming is simply superb, while his repertoire continues to stretch out and embrace diversity, tapping on sources from different decades, as well as the present. "Arts & Crafts" is redone here with the two saxes — alto and tenor — in a swaggering shuffle with double stops and swing in a blues for the deceased bass player from Wilson's band, Dennis Irwin. The cleverly titled "Area Man" in reference to that local guy who shows up in a newspaper headline, is a plod funk that is harmonically drunk. The title selection refers to one falling off a bicycle in a shell-shocked scattershot bop, while "Getting Friendly" has a romanticism cloaked in a semi-dirge frame, with D'Angelo's alto and Lederer's soprano sax painting sour lime colors. The humorously titled "Shooshabuster" is a toned-down curse word, musically bop-driven where the composer D'Angelo wails on his alto, letting the Dolphy-like overtones loose. Bassist Chris Lightcap contributes "Celibate Oriole" which directly reflects Ornette Coleman's sideways and rambling approach with a spiked melody, and the band does a version of the great bop classic "Two Bass Hit" with adroit flexibility, mixing road song urgency with the sourdough horns — a special amalgam. A vocally enhanced version of War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" is tossed in at the end just for fun. Wilson's efforts are so consistently enjoyable, full of new ideas and truly excellent in their execution and concept, that it's hard to lay out any overt criticism. Suffice it to say he's on a roll in the decade of the 2000s, and all of his recordings are meritorious, including this one. ~ Michael G. Nastos, Rovi