Throughout, Previte and his band switch gears without even trying. "Oceania" jams a 12-string guitar riff that sounds like a broken-down Midnight Oil song right next to more spy music right next to reggae without even blinking. Impressively, this all sounds perfectly natural. None of the transitions anywhere on the record sound forced or awkward, no matter how unrelated the two sections might be. Whether it is Hunter's metal riffage on "The Ministry of Love," the atmospheric house-inflected groove of "Anthem for Andrea" or Skerik's ruminatory make-out sax on "Memory Hole," there's not a moment where the album sounds flat or self-indulgent. For an instrumental album made by a bunch of serious jazzheads, that's flat out impressive.
The final test, of course, is to try this album out on someone unsuspecting. Someone whose relationship to music is less fanatic than mine. Someone who doesn't dig on modern art music that sounds like you've stuck your head in an air duct. Someone who doesn't get the melody lines from archival Frank Zappa live performances stuck in their head for days on end. What I'm trying to say is, my wife dug this album too.
The Coalition Of The Willing features players of fearsome talent playing stylish, sinister, beautiful, fractured, epic music with a sense of fun that dumps any consternation caused by the strange song-title and cover art choices right down the memory hole.
Article comments
1 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.