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.