One to watch
There is certainly quality on the Irish scene but in terms of quantity of album releases it’s more a trickle than a flood.
That sweet rain of a sprinkling however moves to spate in 2025 as the jazz year gets off to a flying start through the flooding propulsion and quality settings found on one of the most scintillating debuts emanating from the Irish scene in years, Ninety Degrees.
The artist in question behind the recording, whose debut is out the week before St Patrick’s Day, is saxophonist Tom Caraher.
The tenorist lives in Kilkenny, grew up in County Monaghan and studied at Berklee in Boston.
Bold as love
90 Degrees is a storming jazz-rock, at times even, without using the word too strictly, spiritedly funky, epic of some velocity.
You’ll find that ferocity and fleetness of foot straight out of the gate on opener ‘Maybe’ a piece that was streaming first from the album. Yes there’s a certain shift in the prevailing polarity overall which is carefully gauged in a number of meaningful ways not forgetting a figurative dimension that could be thought of bold as love – just ask the axis, as Jimi Hendrix transcendentally put it.
Written and arranged while Caraher was living in Kerry, the saxophonist had delivered 5 originals plus a cover, drawn from the highest firmament of the Irish music legend diaspora, Lennon and McCartney Rubber Soul classic ‘Michelle,’ on the release. The Irishman is issuing the whole shebang via his own imprint.
The ingenuity of the thrusting front line style is contained in the tight shaping and contouring of sax and trombone textures – Caraher combines with Cork trombone legend Paul Dunlea in this inspired twinning.
Flavoured in the rhythm section by the Rhodes electric piano stylisations of Dubliner Darragh O’Kelly it’s no other than Mary Coughlan’s bassist Barry Donohoe to his elbow, with the line-up completed by the coltish clip of drummer Shane O’Donovan at the canter. Donohoe’s tender touch is a significant factor on the title track, the ballad ‘Ninety Degrees’. Caraher comments that he feels the album “explores themes of heat and transformation, drawing on the sound and spirit of 1970s electric jazz with a modern approach.”
Caraher’s own soloing on ‘Ninety Degrees’ conjures memories of the approach of Seamus Blake when he was touring with Kevin Brady and Bill Carrothers a few years ago playing to a mask wearing audience in Sligo as Ireland began to emerge from Lockdown.
Album highlights include the jaunty trombone contributions encountered on the syncopated stop and start slices of inspired riffery found on ‘Then, Again’ right at the end.