Last I heard him was two years ago at Chelsea venue the Pheasantry in singer Tessa Souter’s band with her husband Billy Drummond and Conor Chaplin.
The standards selected for this upcoming release include jazz choices Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘The Nearness of You’, Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight’ Johnny Green’s ‘Body and Soul’ and ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ by Rodgers and Hart plus pop and rock covers of Paul Simon’s ‘Old Friends’ and The Band’s ‘The Weight.’
A studio album this was recorded during three days of the early half of May in 2023. It’s pretty middle of the road fare and I don’t mean that as a criticism. These aren’t weasel words, it’s just what it is.
If you want the more pulsating side of Watson it isn’t here – go hear that on his album released more than a decade ago with Manu Katché Live in Concert.
But with the eye more on the sparrow and what’s to expect for me ‘The Nearness of You’ and ‘Body and Soul’ work best of all.
I suppose if you are a rock fan and then a jazz fan (with me it’s the other way round) you will go to the Paul Simon and The Band tracks first. They are quite manicured but then most solo piano albums in the jazz idiom covering anything respectfully are quite manicured. Again that isn’t a criticism just an observation.
As for his own originals Watson’s sentimental side is certainly expressed. You get an Abdullah Ibrahim quality to the lilting title track ‘Calling You Home’ which works very well. The fat clusters of notes that spread all over ‘Tetrad’ streaming ahead of release also coagulate into brightly voiced evocative splodges of sound and cadential passion. Stylistically Watson is like Acoustic Ladyland’s Tom Cawley a bit and also reminds me of the sound of Nick Ramm (known for his work with flautist Finn Peters).
I’m a Billy Jenkins fan more than a Katie Melua one – both artists with whom Watson has worked.
So just by these examples you can see how versatile Watson is whether accompanying a songstress, playing jazz on his own self squired releases or the blues.
The album I like that he is on most is Guy Barker 2002 Provocateur classic Soundtrack.
Watson’s jazz chops can be heard on an album like The Loop probably even more than on this new work.
I’d say on this new one at the risk of stating the obvious that Watson has assimilated a lot of his interests and past experiences musically into both his subtle writing and playing style. But that means he isn’t a ventriloquist or even more subtly going down the esque-is-more route not that there’s anything wrong with that. (That’s playing in the mould of someone else or doing a tribute to them.) So Calling You Home is an original conception even bearing in mind the familiarities of the framing. It’s highly decorous, very easy on the ear, classy and on the basis certainly a connoisseur choice of clout with the only caveat that if you’re looking for a little edge you’ll have been misdirected. No animals were hurt in the making of this recording. But equally there’s no need at all for Watson to kill his darlings given the concision and clarity of these carefully carved out renderings.
- Hear Watson back in Chelsea next month at the 606 on 8 July.
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Sharp Little Bones, Step Up! Get Down! Full Beam Music ***
A whole lot less frenetic than the title suggests this is a far more thoughtful and introspective version of Nottingham band Sharp Little Bones than hitherto.
Once again playing the tunes of the band’s bass guitarist Simon Paterson and featuring the sax of Tony Kofi as a guest there’s a 1970s flavour and a gravitation towards jazz-rock fusion although the style flits about a bit.
“It’s not like it’s a procession of formulaic Buggins turn soloing”: click, above for a review of earlier album Volumes I and 2 reviewed in 2023
Paul Deats on Rhodes piano and Moog synthesiser is fairly restrained – this isn’t really a relentless funky sound at all and doesn’t rely overly on boisterous riffs or metrical pyrotechnics.
Far more interesting is what Kofi does on ‘Portman Pie’ and he mainly steals the show. I feel overall the band sounds a bit too restrained. But it is credible stuff and the tunes are better than what I remember of their earlier album. ‘Woody’ Wood on drums reminds me of Get the Blessing’s Clive Deamer a bit in places as he has the same rugged style. The album was recorded at the University of Nottingham Recording Studio in July last year.
Check the band and Kofi playing ‘Sweet Bitter Crush’ at Peggy’s Skylight live in Nottingham last year. Dates coming up include Peggy’s Skylight (17 October) and The Cockpit, London (26 Oct).
The balladic side of the album particularly ‘Sweet Bitter Crush’ works best of all. For variety it would have been interesting to have had a classic jazz ballad on the album written by someone else in addition to the originals.
Photos: Martin Makowski
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Rahsaan Barber, Eternal, Jazz Music City Records ***1/2
Rahsaan Barber photo credit: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This slips down very easily. New from American saxophonist Rahsaan Barber, 46, who hails from Nashville and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it’s urgent, authorial, tenor saxophone soaked in hard bop and beyond. But Barber is no beginner and experience shows. So if you are looking for meretricious novelty and flavour of the day ephemerality, sorry, nothing to see here.
The American has been around the block a few times with some half a dozen albums to his name already. Here he is with guitarist Ted Ludwig, pianist Matt Endahl, bassist Kevin Beardsley and drummer Joshua Hunt. Ludwig’s contributions stand out most in the backing sound and are part of why the album works so well in its fabric stitched in underneath the declarative saxophone lead.
Released on Barber’s own Jazz Music City label, what you will discover should you choose to listen is a straightahead and blues inflected modern jazz amalgam. If you are into what Christian McBride does, the shelter of the shade of the cedar tree counts here too as a kind of future proofed signifier stylistically in some of the writing.
Barber is partly a Stanley Turrentine kind of player. That side of his playing is dialled down a bit but it’s still there on some of the more characterful passages on this new record. Check RB out on earlier Turrentine homage the rollicking ‘Song for Stanley T’ going back more than 20 years to his own album, TrioSoul.
I’d choose ‘Sanctuary at Seaside’ and the feelgood ‘Cabbage’ as the standout tracks of this latest album just released – the latter reprised at the end as if there wasn’t quite enough material to fill the album out.
The whole thing is easy to digest on a first listen without being at all overly toothsome and I’ll go back to it over the weekend for repeat play – it’s people pleasing jazz without making too many compromises.
Barber, among his siblings, has a twin brother, trombonist Roland Barber and both musicians were named after saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-77). Dr Barber studied at Indiana University under the ex-George Russell Stratusphunk trombonist David Baker (1931-2016), before completing a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music and later completing a doctorate in classical saxophone at the University of Memphis. Sadly Barber and his wife, classical saxophonist Heidi Radtke, suffered the unexpected loss of a pregnancy that was to be their first child, a daughter. Through loss Eternal finds something deep inside that speaks to the world.
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Finn Carter, Finding Home, Whirlwind **** recommended
Finn Carter photo via Whirlwind
New and very notable from Finn Carter in a quartet setting plus guest trumpeter Christos Stylianides on the more free form ‘Clear Your Mind (If You Can)’. In Carter’s band the young London pianist/organist and composer who favours a very poignant, heartfelt touch which isn’t twee in the slightest is joined by tenor saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi who proves highly effective, double bassist Joe MacLaren – brilliant on ‘Clear Your Mind (If You Can)’ sounding a bit like Jacob Gryn (the Sultan Stevenson bassist) – and drummer Blake Cascoe who has worked with Sampha, Little Simz and PinkPantheress. Carter started to emerge in the Lockdown years around late 2021 and this release shows how much his sound is in full bloom.
Carter and MacLaren were both on the rather lovely Rex Orange County’s alt. country tinged ‘Guitar Song’ which was on the English singer songwriter Alex O’Connor’s album The Alexander Technique which came out a few years ago under O’Connor’s Rex Orange County moniker.
But this new album is jazz and makes no apologies for it nor for its melodicism that’s part of the blend. In this video filmed earlier this year at Nottingham jazz club Peggy’s Skylight, Carter, Akinnibi, MacLaren and Cascoe play Hymn for My Dad tune ‘Swimming Pool Jones.’ The opening chords are like the spirit Billy Taylor tapped on ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’. I always feel very grounded when a pianist enters that sort of spiritual domain and finds a new path to navigate it. Home Again abounds with such moments often cloaked in softly tolling cadential microcosm.
Hymn For My Dad itself which is also extremely good was recorded at a studio in Portugal and released in 2024. Akinnibi and MacLaren were on that too. But for this new one the pianist has changed his drummer.
Finding Home is very touching, powerfully mournful and rather poignant and feels authentic. Highly recommendable, I’d pick out ‘Rejoicing You’ where the sax comes into its own most and there is strong bass soloing. Carter’s opening to ‘Short Stories’ is utterly beautiful – it has a twirling music box quality to it as if pins are plucking out hidden, encrypted, emotion – and I find myself playing that over and over again, the theme carefully delineated by Akinnibi whose work I also liked doing Afro jazz fusion in very catchy fashion with Blue Lab Beats. Tunes are all Carter’s. Deserves maximum exposure, respect, plaudits and recognition.
- Hear Finn Carter at the Vortex, Dalston this coming Tuesday evening. Finding Home is in the marlbank top new UK jazz tally for 2026 – read the full list
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