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GRAHAM CONNAH
Because Of Wayne/The Only Song
We Know (Evander 13)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
Graham Connah first came to my attention in March of last year when I heard the Gurney To The Lincoln Center Of Your Mind CD by one of his bands, The Sour Note Seven, and being a fan of avant-garde jazz I was thrilled to death to discover someone with such a clear grasp of the concept on the same coast as I live on. Well, it always seems like all the truly interesting avant-garde comes from Europe and that drives me to drink. I want to believe I may actually get to experience something like this live someday, and I don't see myself kicking back in Copenhagen anytime soon. Connah's band still blows me away on the first of these three discs, entitled Because Of Wayne, starting with Connah himself. His stylistic diversity on keyboards is the stuff heroes are made of. With Mr. Bungle's bassist supreme Trever Dunn on board working with Smith Dobson, Jr. (drums) and a horn section led by sax giant in the making Rob Sudduth, The Sour Note Seven can and does flow from style to style effortlessly. Avant-garde gives way to fusion which melts into a few moments of pure beauty before exploding into something close to hard rock that will fragment back into avant-garde. The vocalist, Jewlia Eisenberg, was on the previous release and I don't remember being bothered, but this time around there's a fingernails on chalkboard thing happening I wish wasn't marring the songs that I would be liking a whole lot more otherwise. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's the fragility of the voice, but I'm uncomfortable listening to it.
Discs two and three are performed by Connah's other band, Jettison Slinky, a nine-piece outfit with an entirely different approach to music. The first track, "Snacks and Perspective," sounds very much like an official merger between Zappa & The Mothers and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Frank's spinning in his grave just because somebody wrote that down. Sorry Frank. It's a wild and free track with an audience to seek. (They're out there, and they'll go bonkers on this stuff.) The second track seems way out of left field in comparison. Cheesy keyboards, cheesy... everything, really. Different vocalist, this time Nancy Clarke, but she just barely has more power and control in her voice than Eisenberg. You know how that goes; a music professor can prove that she has perfect control after all. I can drive into a wall on purpose, too. Doesn't make anybody want to ride with me. The presence of guitarist Alex Candelara gives this CD more depth than the first disc, but then the extra two players in general will do that. Candelara makes his mark with a molten tone and fluid style that sits nicely within the structure of the group, adding heavy doses of power when needed. Overall, this is the more diverse CD, as well.
Disc three begins majestically. again sounding a little like Emerson, Lake, Zappa and Palmer. "Bathe In The Spray Of The Spittle" has a lot going for it, though, including intense Hammond B3 organ from Connah, subtle yet important low rhythmic pushes from the horns, and drums like you would not believe. I wouldn't be surprised if the original working title was "bathed in the Spray Of The Drummer's Sweat." Keith Moon's ghost manifests long enough to say "Calm down! Save it, mate!" Ches Smith is having none of it, and he continues playing the hell out of his drum kit, even on what you'd call the "slow songs" by default. At first I was terribly confused by "Escape From Theme Park Pokey," as it seemed to be a very standard 70s funk tune minus the wah wah pedal. And a 9 minute-plus check in time, at that. But as the groove makes it's way around and around, it seems as if a count is taken from each instrument, one at a time, until the piece has broken down into near chaos. Instead of melting down entirely, it continues this way until it reaches a strange rhythm where it all fits asymmetrically. I found this so interesting I kept rewinding and listening over and over to figure out how the hell they did it.
Some of the rest of CD 3 is a bit lightweight, some is a bit confusing, parts of it are fascinating in the way they deconstruct and regenerate as something new. It's like that all through the box, really. There's more than enough here to keep an avant-garde fan in the headphones for a long time. He or she would be irritated from time to time, but there's meat on these here bones. And talent as far as the ear can hear.
© 2001 - DJ Johnson