I’m Going to Suck this Piano into My Lungs

Midway through a Jan. 5 performance by the Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio at Iridium Jazz Club, Smith stood up at his organ, calmly stepped to the side and turned his back to the audience as drummer Herlin Riley took off and furiously pounded a funky Brazilian rhythm on a drum kit that was shaking so violently it could have toppled over.

Throughout the trio’s five-song set, Riley was poised to steal the show from organist Smith and guitarist Russell Malone.  His aggressive polyrhythms and sledgehammer attack pushed and pulled the trio in and out of virtuosic solo passages.  He complimented Malone’s and Smith’s every move, anticipating by milliseconds the growing ferocity of their playing. As Malone’s bluesy, dissonant solos grew louder and faster, Riley provided explosions of cymbal crashes and snare shots.  As the churn of Smith’s organ grew more intense, he maniacally swung his arms as he produced fills on his tom-toms with John Henry-like power.

But Riley’s playing never overpowered Malone and Smith.  In fact, his energy and confidence behind the drum kit only made them appear more comfortable as the set continued.  Malone’s solos grew more ambitious.  During the set closer “Come Together,” he interrupted his dissonant melodies with a sudden burst of Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady” that nearly brought him off of the stool he was glued to throughout the set.

And Smith, at 65, attacked the organ with the fervor of a man half his age.  He swayed back and forth, beginning his solos in a dirge-like fashion before slowly building his intensity, playing faster and looser as the songs drew on, periodically grunting and growling into the microphone as he drew squelches and squeals from his Hammond.

It was all complimented perfectly by Riley’s rhythmic anticipation, his seeming ability to read Smith’s and Russell’s minds as they explored both inside and outside the song forms.  Dr. Lonnie Smith’s name may have been topping the bill, but his show’s electricity and tightness wouldn’t have been possible without Riley.

Marked by a mix of west coast cool and New York hard bop sensibility, the Swedish Peter Asplund Quartet took the stage at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola on Jan. 7 with a set that called to mind the styles of jazz greats such as McCoy Tyner and Miles Davis.  The music ebbed and flowed as the players moved back and forth between subdued, mellow melodies and furious runs at high tempos that obscured the song form.

Throughout the show—the first of 2008 in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Upstarts! series—Asplund and his quartet were laid back, bobbing their heads and slowly swaying side to side as they played.  But their near stoicism belied the aggressiveness of their improvisations.

At its best moments, the music was fast and loose.  Trumpeter Asplund and pianist Jacob Karlzon played wild melodies, at times completely disregarding rhythm and tempo, blowing and tinkering through scales at breakneck speeds.  At one point, during a “The 26 Steps,” Asplund unleashed a fury of notes that evoked the saxophone playing of John Coltrane.  The explosion appeared to inspire drummer Johan Lofcrantz Ramsay, whose playing, until that point, had been rather stiff.  His movements became more fluid and his approach loosened.  He structured his rhythmic patterns around the beat, but not directly on it, instead allowing the meter to be carried by bassist Hans Andersson’s bluesy, walking patterns.

And the energy of the music never shook the band out of their calm demeanor. They oozed cool, merely bobbing their heads and smiling, even as the closing song of the set, “Falling In Love With Love,” built to a furious crescendo.  But perhaps it was Asplund who provided the greatest image of cool as the set closed.  As the cacophony grew around him, he remained poised, leaning backwards with his back to the band, bent at the knees and blowing on his Flugelhorn, eyes closed as he played.  

Bruce Springsteen has gone back to the 1970s with Magic, his latest album.  As soon as you hear the E Street Band invoking “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” in “Livin’ In The Future,” and “Jungleland” in “I’ll Work For Your Love,” you’ll feel like you’re back in the epic days of Born to Run.

In addition to similarities to Born to Run, Magic features loud guitars, yearning vocals and wall-of-sound production.  Springsteen hasn’t sounded this overblown in a long time, but surprisingly, the heavily layered arrangements only make the album rock harder.

On many of the tracks on Magic, Springsteen overdubs guitars as if he hasn’t used them on an album in years (listen to the freight-train punch of “Radio Nowhere”), and it lights a fire under the rest of the E Street Band.  They sound invigorated and impassioned on “Gypsy Biker,” invoking a sense of the brooding danger felt on 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.  The song begins with a lone acoustic guitar and a crying harmonica before the rest of the instruments explode after the first verse, encircling and elevating Springsteen’s yearning vocal melody.

Springsteen’s lyrical style on Magic also harkens back to an earlier period in his career.  The lyrics on Magic sound more romanticized than lyrics on other recent releases.  Springsteen still talks about the problems facing America—mainly, the Iraq War—but his commentary is often veiled in lyrics that make Springsteen appear as if he is singing about love lost and small-town angst.

And while Springsteen might seem beyond the age of writing about watching “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,” his lyrics, along with Magic’s passionate and ornate arrangements, evoke an image of a young Springsteen writhing onstage as his band gives it all they’ve got on a late night in a dark New Jersey bar.  It might make you wish every year was 1975.

Kanye West is ambitious, and he has no problem telling others about it.  In a recent issue of Blender, the rapper states, “I want to be the worldwide top artist.  You can quote that. I want to be the No. 1 artist in the world.”

 On his latest album, Graduation, West tries to take a few steps toward his goal.  It’s shorter and less indulgent than his first two releases, and it attempts to add more variety to West’s practice of ripping soul song samples and laying them over a pounding beat. Still, the variety and tighter organization don’t make Graduation any better than his previous albums, The College Dropout (2004) or Late Registration (2005).

 In fact, Graduation may be West’s weakest effort.  He mars the production on much of the album with overly lush synthesizer arrangements that constantly threaten to overpower the beat.  This is particularly evident in “Flashing Lights,” where wavering strings and techno-style synthesizers turn a song with a heavy, pulsing beat into European one-hit-wonder dance pop.  On “The Good Life,” featuring T-Pain—singer of “Buy U a Drank”—West attempts to channel “We Don’t Care” from Dropout in a self-righteous celebration (“50 told me go ‘head and switch the style up/and if they hate then let ‘em hate/and watch the money pile up”), but too much electronic gloss is added, and it buries West’s rapping and T-Pain’s crooning under layers of high-pitched chirps.

 And let’s talk about West’s larger-than-life ego.  Arrogance may be common in the world of hip-hop, but West’s arrogance is his trademark, and it’s all over Graduation.  Too often, though, the uninspired production limits the impact of West’s self-praise.  The only time his cockiness and production mesh is on “The Glory.”  West clobbers a sped-up Laura Nyro sample with a pounding beat while spitting lines of self-aggrandizing venom: “So yeah at the Grammys I went ultra Travolta/Yeah that tuxedo mighta been a little Guido/ but with my ego, I can stand there in a Speedo/and still be looked at like a fuckin’ hero.”

 Beneath the clouds of synthesizers on Graduation, moments like this are hard to find.  And, unfortunately, these moments are where West is at his best, when his cockiness mixes with celebratory soul loops to create catchy anthems of self-praise.  If West wants to be the world’s top artist, this is what fans need to hear.  It’s a shame that they can’t hear it more clearly on Graduation.