Mary Halvorson is very much a critic’s favourite. And you can understand why. The guitarist, improviser, composer from the States is an innovator for her microtonal, wonky signature sound. And increasingly over a range of recent albums – as heard straight away on ‘Full of Neon’ – her burgeoning chamber jazz compositional style grows in stature. It has a gravity just as compelling.
Less pared down than some of her work this latest complete with 8 new compositions was produced and mixed by indie rock band Deerhoof’s John Dieterich. About Ghosts is shaped around her sextet Amaryllis factoring in the fittingly phantom like mystery inducing characteristic of vibes, trombone and trumpet – and guests include alto sax star Immanuel Wilkins.
Halvorson also plays a synth on tracks like ‘Carved From’ which is a new development in her approach. She has noted: “It felt like a subtle layer had settled there, which could almost escape one’s notice. Sort of like the ghost member of the band.”
Inevitably when you listen to Halvorson you think of jazz guitarists who also have distinctive sounds. She’s probably closer to the heavy microtonal player David Fiuczynski on one level but Fuze’s writing style is quite different. In terms of general “quirkiness” and the off kilter syncopated episodes she often cultivates and turns into driverless vehicles that have a mind of their own, Bill Frisell, with whom she has worked, is more a match as a writer and player especially timbrally. She is great at eking out bluesiness without being obvious and factoring in skidding glides and interjections that share the same joy as a child might show on a wintry day tearing down a hill on a toboggan or playing around with a garden hose as the seasons turn to summer spraying water over friends just for the sheer mischief and fun of it all.
What’s here, sometimes busy, heavily arranged, sometimes more liminal and yet exactingly so in the pursuit of studied sourly voiced harmonic discovery, is less avant-garde than some of the 44 year old’s considerable body of work heretofore – her own records started coming out towards the last years of the noughties initially on niche avant labels like Firehouse 12.
Of her work I most like the collaborations with the great Robert Wyatt found on her band Code Girl’s Artlessly Falling.
And I also like her stimulating balladic collaborations with Bill Frisell on Johnny Smith tribute The Maid With The Flaxen Hair.
And I like this too more than anything on her Nonesuch albums so far. It’s more a concert hall listen than a jazz club one. And it’s an ensemble rather than band at work. Again that’s a useful distinction to bear in mind given that she can do formal composition better than most and needs a virtuosic group of musicians around her to deliver it who believe in progressive sounds. The contrapuntal push and pull the brass instruments draw out evoke a circus-like zaniness on ‘Full of Neon’.
Step inside a hall full of unusual mirrors where your head will be swollen in the reflective pane, your focus distorted – you might not even believe what you can see or may choose to throw your head back and laugh uproariously at the distortion.
Does Halvorson swing if you must ask? Yes she does in her own way. But there’s nothing heavy footed or formulaic about the rhythmic patterns she glides over and there’s lots of metrical shifting and a restlessness about the pieces. And yet there’s nothing obscurantist for the sake of it here. She is her own best navigator – a Thelonious Monk of the guitar for sheer individual vision – and reliably surveys the road less travelled. You never know where an album of this remarkable player’s is going to go next.
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