Album of the day: EST - Seven Days Of Falling vs. Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey - Walking With Giants

I find it impossible to not pair a review of these two albums together. They're too similar in some respects to ignore making a connection. Two trios, both powered by bass, drums, and piano, and both fitting somewhat similarly into that piano-trio jazz category. Where they differ, however is how they apply themselves to the template.

My pick of the day is overwhelmingly in favor of EST - the Esbjorn Svensson Trio for long. Their music skews more toward the classically-inspired dreaminess of Brad Mehldau, especially his album Largo, or the quirky fun of the Bad Plus, but the influences stretch further back to Keith Jarret, whose graceful yet strong lyricism Svensson obviously finds intriguing.

EST ply their trade in dramatic, dark, lyrical passages, jazzy, but possessed of a modern bent that finds them leaning less on chord-changes copped from standard jazz fare and more on big cinematic moments. Like Mehldau, the trio excels at creating atmosphere, and Svensson's light plinkings at the keyboard waft like an aroma, a heady and beautiful one that is intoxicating to the discerning listener. Like with Mehldau, adventurous fans of Radiohead's newer, hypnotic dirges like Amnesiac's "Pyramid Song" would probably find much to enjoy here.

The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey takes the piano-trio in another direction - into jam-band land. It seems when Medeski, Martin, & Wood found a welcoming embrace in the jam scene, having been exposed through touring and word of mouth to Phish and Dead fans, they provided a new outlet for jazz-derived music. MMW has made an art of this, coaxing jam-band listeners in with long grooves that had less to do with traditional showy jazz jamming than it does the long, meandering riffing and vamping the Dead pioneered and perfected so long ago. MMW can make it mesmerizing and thrilling at times - but at others it grows wearisome. The JFJO fall right in between those two extremes - they don't succumb to the lows that befall MMW, but they also don't quite reach as high as they can at their best, either. At worst, the JFJO's music can be cloying, as on "Nibbles," where what I assume to be the "octave-pedal-induced bass" (which sounds suspiciously like an Ebowed guitar) wears out its welcome very quickly. At their best, JFJO are startlingly classy, as on "Walking With Giants," which seems to contain nods to many of their influences (and hence the title) - Coltrain drummer Elvin Jones (whose death is acknowledged on the artwork), pianists McCoy Tyner, and Bud Powell, among others I picked up on. Luckily, the latter outweighs the former - and most tracks I found less appealing featured that same "octave-pedal-induced bass," which really sounds more like a gimmick than a legitimate musical device. The JFJO are probably a good starting point for those who've been exposed to the jazzy jamming of bands in the jam-band scene, but don't know where to go beyond MMW, and there's enough meat here to satisfy open-minded jazz fans, too.

Article Author: Tom Johnson

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