Sylva by Snarky Puppy and the Metropole Orkest - First Impressions

After having some major problems with the last album from groundUP Records(Swift by Bill Laurance), I’m happy to report that Sylva, the latest endeavour from Michael League, Snarky Puppy and the Metropole Orkest, has restored my faith in the jazz fusion collective.

My biggest concern going into this album was that the use of the orchestra was going to feel gimmicky and tacked-on to give the album an interesting selling point, but nothing more. Thankfully, the orchestra and the band feel like one giant ensemble rather than one accompanying the other. There is only one track that doesn’t implement the Metropole Orkest so well - The Curtain. I want to get my problems with this track out of the way before I continue to praise the rest of the album. The problem I had with The Curtain is that it felt like a bunch of different ideas (all of which had potential) shoved together into one, huge,underdeveloped piece. If they had taken one or two of the ideas they included and developed them, they could have come up with a couple of really great,memorable pieces. What they were left with, instead, was the only piece on the album which felt too long and where the orchestra felt misused.

Much to my relief, the rest of this latest album is characteristically brilliant. TheClearing - the 20 minute centrepiece of the album - is incredibly enjoyable and,unlike The Curtain, never felt too long. The highlight of the album is Gretel - adramatic anthem like piece with an incredible, booming final section whichmakes great use of silence and the full force of the entire ensemble alike. Ialso loved Flight and Atchafalaya. These are, to me, the most melodically andrhythmically interesting pieces on the album and, to make things just that littlebit better, they lead really nicely into each other.

Sylva is an incredibly enjoyable and musically interesting album, that makes fora fantastic follow up to last year’s equally brilliant We Like It Here. I definitely recommend supporting the band by buying this album. All I can say now is that I am even more excited for Snarky Puppy’s next album, coming later this year - Family Dinner Volume 2.

Swift by Bill Laurance - First Impressions

I have to say, I’m a little disappointed by this new album. Having thoroughly enjoyed Flint, I expected Swift to build upon the foundations that the previous album established. Flint was an album that not only provided intellectually stimulating music, but also provided music that evoked feeling from the listener. Swift is certainly musically diverse and impressive in an intellectual sense, which is something I always look for when listening to new music, but it never made me feel anything. Swift lacks the balance that Flint found between esotericism and accessibility. There are certainly no standout tracks that stuck with me after listening to the album. I understand that the point of this album is to create a series of musical landscapes, but what that does is to make sitting and listening to the pieces themselves as a primary activity rather difficult. The biggest issue that I have with the album is that it seems confused. On one hand, it’s trying to break down the barriers between genres and create an intellectual music experience. On the other hand, it creates a sound that is best heard when one doesn’t pay attention to it. There is no denying that the music itself has a serene beauty to it, but that doesn’t help the fact that at times, it feels as if it’s not moving anywhere. To me, Swift feels like an album that could have done something amazing, had the music felt as though it had the purpose that the concept of the album intended.

The Phosphorescent Blues - Album Review

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around me knows how much I love music. Anyone who has spent a substantial amount of time around me knows that Punch Brothers are the one group of people who I will always trust to create music that I will love. Anyone who, like me, was a little worried prior to hearing The Phosphorescent Blues (Punch Brothers’ newest album) that the band was moving in a direction far from what made so many of us fall in love with their sound, can sleep soundly tonight. Whilst there are a few tracks on the new album that aren't up to the boys’ usual standard, there is enough good to be found within The Phosphorescent Blues to call it another successful endeavour from the best progressive bluegrass has to offer.

The album opens with what appears to be somewhat of a preview of what the band is trying to achieve with The Phosphorescent Blues. The first track – Familiarity – is a ten minute long tune that has been split in two. The first half, whilst having some pretty complex instrumental lines, is very vocal focused and introduces drums for the first time in a Punch Brothers song, played by Jay Bellerose (someone who Chris Thile referred to on the band’s website as a “sixth Punch Brother”). I have to say I was incredibly sceptical of the inclusion of drums in this new album. I have always appreciated that the Punch Brothers were able to simulate the effect of drums without actually having a drummer. Fortunately, whilst the drums are a little jarring to begin with, they find their place within the group’s sound in the second half of Familiarity. Speaking of the second half, this is where we see the other element of what’s to come in TPB: the classic Punch Brothers sound you know and love. I really liked Familiarity. It sort of feels like a trailer for the rest of the album and does that job really well.

The rest of the album can be sorted into two categories: ‘pop heavy’ and ‘bluegrass heavy’. What I mean by this is that when listening to each song I imagined a set of scales. On one side was the influence of pop music and on the other was the influence of older, more folky Punch Brothers songs. All of the songs on this album have influences from both ends of the scale (the only exceptions being the Debussy and Scriabin covers which are straight arrangements for bluegrass instruments of the original pieces), but some songs have more weight on one side than the other. I had more difficulty in getting behind the more ‘pop heavy’ songs. This may be due to my broad dislike of pop music and the fact that most of these songs featured drums which still irks me a little, however, I think the main reason for my issue with the ‘pop heavy’ songs on TPB was due to the lack of esotericism, a trait that I have come to expect from Punch Brothers’ music. I think the best example of this lack of complexity is I Blew It Off. This song was the first song revealed from the new album and was the source of my concern before I listened to the entire set. It is the simplest song on the album and the most repetitive. That’s not to say that this is representative of the entire album. In fact, the album is saved by six songs that I absolutely loved.

Some of those six songs fall under the ‘bluegrass heavy’ category. Whilst these songs certainly draw from older Punch Brothers material, it is not the case that this new music is entirely in the spirit of past albums. My two favourite songs on TPB are My Oh My and Julep. These songs definitely come from progressive bluegrass beginnings and that is the predominant sound here, but they have moved somewhat towards the area of pop music. This is the direction in which I expected the Punch Brothers to take their sound and with these two songs as well as Passepied (Debussy) and Boll Weevil, they have done so successfully.

The last song I want to talk about before giving my overall verdict of The Phosphorescent Blues is Little Lights – the last song on the album. This, I feel, finds the perfect balance between bluegrass and pop. The song focuses mainly on the singing (and Chris Thile’s slightly off-putting falsetto), including some lovely, folky vocal harmonies and a collection of fan-submitted vocal clips arranged in a sort of sample choir. This focus on the vocals is not at the expense of the instrumental work. There is an enchanting violin solo that leads into, and carries on during the chorus. The melancholy tone of this song hammers home the slightly sombre mood of the entire album and closes out the set incredibly well. This is also the only track where the drums never felt out of place.

The Phosphorescent Blues is not the best Punch Brothers album, but it does have enough good in it to sustain my confidence in Thile, Critter, Pickles, Gabbers and Arco Paulo. I enjoyed a lot of the new album, but the overall direction of the music is unclear and that bothers me. To put it simply, The Phosphorescent Blues is confusing, but enjoyable and in the end… Isn't that all that matters?


7/10