A big step in the right direction again
Capable of great things JD Allen is a unique player who travels that bit more deeply than most.
We're talking momentousness when a player uses the saxophone as a window to an internal life which is like a world of thought, philosophy - deep feeling and study.
The American is one of the few tenorists alive - David Murray, Charles Lloyd, Branford Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Chris Potter, Jan Garbarek, James Carter, Tommy Smith are some of the others - who can move me. Their astounding instrumentalism is one thing - and there is that higher transmission, a kind of transcendentalism all are capable of achieving and so often deliver up.
And while this latest JD isn't a masterpiece like Allen's Bloom it's a big improvement on the more electronic experimentations that he negotiated on This which for me didn't seem to suit him as well. You're going to want to have this latest just out. Allen is the sort of player who attracts completists.
Journeying To the Urge Within
If new to Allen judge everything by 'Pater Noster' on Bloom and you will know immediately how Allen is capable of - as John Coltrane did - of penetrating your soul as if hit by a bow and arrow getting you down to the very marrow.
Here with simpatico colleagues in bassists Gregg August & Ian Kenselaar plus drummer Nic Cacioppo it's stripped back and almost seems like saxophone soliloquies given the power of what Allen can say through his saxophone direct from musician to listener. He has a way on a recording of communicating with the perfect stranger.
Heavvvvyyy, man
Challenging but nevertheless very humane The Dark, the Light, the Grey and the Colorful could have been fleshed out even more - it seems as if it is short on material. Maybe it's just you're left wanting more
But these originals make sense and I'd much prefer a smaller number of tunes than a lot of padding added in for the sake of it. The best is kept to last and there's the deepness we crave most of all on 'If They Holler Let Them Go' which is easily the best track when everything ignites and a certain mystical, chemical - call it what you like - reaction clicks into place.
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