A 21st century Dickensian dimension emerges that deconstructs in part a modern sense of London inspired by landscape
Try me – odd title but direct enough. There’s nothing new under the sun. But it is a world away from the doo-wop found on James Brown and the Famous Flames’ song of the same name from the 1950s. So for starters what’s here from My Iris [the band name] is flavoured by Hammond organ and guitar
And yet it isn’t just one thing. As beyond the soul jazz you get experimentation and much else. Tunes were inspired by a wintry walk from Rotherhithe to Blackfriars Bridge.
I suppose you could claim this is Clowes’ London album, perhaps the first of several given how coherent the inspiration proved. On a certain level this is quondam Shrewsbury saxist Trish Clowes’ most mainstream release to date. What I mean by “mainstream” is not that it swings so relentlessly you could find yourself rattling down to Balham, gateway to the south, without even noticing it; more that the language is clearly inspired by core jazz feeling and mood. All the musicians have a jazz pedigree so that helps and nobody is playing daft nursery rhymes set to a click track or availing of the work of a producer for each track and three engineers to muck about with the sonics. Other irrelevant definitions of mainstream possibly involving Gerry Mulligan or Oscar Peterson are available.
Certainly Try Me contrasts heavily with her chamber jazz and classical sounds summoned on duo album Colour Fields which I liked a lot. I’ve heard Trish live and she has an excellent sound. And as a writer is just as inventive.
Oh, gentle reader, heard Emma Rawicz, by the way? If so the difference between the two – Rawicz is English jazz’s most recent star – is that Rawicz is more jazz-rock in her approach. While I like both players lots, of the two I prefer Clowes’ approach. And I think this is her best album to date.
On ‘St Saviour’s Dock’ the place where her walk ended, the enigma of the space with its “unique echoes, the sounds of various birds, the metallic sounds of construction work” partly drew her in.
I was reading a fascinating blog called A London Inheritance about the area. According to the author, referring to a map that you can view on the blog, the area between the waterway on the left and St Saviour’s Dock is the area that would become known as Jacob’s Island (after Jacob Street running through the centre).
“It was Charles Dickens who would bring some notoriety to this small patch of Bermondsey” when he again according to A London Inheritance located Fagin’s den and Bill Sikes’ death in Jacob’s Island in Oliver Twist.
Clowes says she needed to construct a piece regarding the riverside aspect of the place as it seems to me in a very un-Dickensian manner (the invention of the saxophone did pre-date David Copperfield but jazz didn’t) using extended sax techniques, playing into the piano strings with the sustain pedal down, and then writing a melody she says from the resultant harmony and structure of the tenor saxophone multiphonics.
I think you get the firmest grasp on the jazz side of Clowes’ personality here and she seems to have shed her primary influences (eg Iain Ballamy) at last. All great artists who grow, and Clowes is and does, erase their influences when they have fully absorbed them or if not make these less and less obvious.
The Royal Academy of Music educated 42 year old who has been living in London for more than 20 years is a polymath but albums like this are easiest to digest for people who spend their free time in jazz clubs and festivals than some of her work which belongs more in concert venues like Wigmore Hall where she returns to later this year.
The band knits well together. I would like to hear a little more of guitarist Chris Montague in the sound however. But you hear him effectively on ‘Quiet Time.’
But really you come to this album for the sax sound above all and that as always with Clowes is rewarding given the poise and skill she constantly exhibits. Certainly there is nothing cold here which is an achievement in itself and the array of styles fed in is so multi-faceted it’s an album that keeps you guessing. You won’t be saying I’m sorry I haven’t a clue at all afterwards as it all makes perfect sense.
