This Week: Two veteran groups' live sets and a promising debut
Weather Report
Live and Unreleased (Columbia/Legacy)
This collection picks up the Weather Report story in 1975, not long after co-founders Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter had ditched their atmospheric beginnings for a more backbeat-driven approach. Multiethnic manifestos like Black Market rightly became fusion history. This (unchronological) live set could have enriched the duo's legacy, but it is a mixed bag.
The irony is that these performances rely on a top-name parade of drummers, bassists, and percussionists whose energy tends to overwhelm Zawinul's colorful keyboard palette and Shorter's increasingly insignificant reed work. For the overture "Freezing Fire" or the funky gait of "Cucumber Slumber," it's appropriate. But the constant barrage of testosterone soon kills the goose, and whatever subtleties tunes like "River People" and "Man in the Green Shirt" may have had in the first place go missing. By the time of 1983's "Where the Moon Goes," even taste disappears; Zawinul's Vocoder (!) doggerel leads into a clinical synth and drum exchange of the worst sort.
On the up side, the menacing air of "Night Passage" is well done (bravo Jaco), and a sharp, collective investigation of Zawinul's classic "Directions" rewards those who slog through all of Disc Two. In fairness to the rest of the music, the audiences of the time were enthusiastic, even when dragged twice around the house of "Teen Town." But the challenge, not quite fulfilled here, is to turn the old saw of "you had to be there" into "you are there."
—Chris Mitchell
Oregon
Live at Yoshi's (Intuition)
Oregon has never lacked gravitas. No, but it can be characterized as lacking muscle.
In that sense Live at Yoshi's is in keeping with the Oregon's 30-year discography. Actually the first tune, titled "Pounce," does suggest a less kind, less gentle Oregon, what with Mark Walker laying down a tom-tom heavy new world order, Paul McCandless discovering an elusive edge to his English horn's upper register and wandering outside the changes with it, and Ralph Towner pulling out nearly all stops on guitar, short of feedback needless to say.
Uncharacteristic new world order indeed. Oregon more typically flirts with an ersatz New Age sound, being in actuality thankfully too sophisticated for that moniker. And the remainder of Live at Yoshi's is more in keeping with that sophistication. In fact, much of what follows "Pounce" is extended denouement, the quiet after the storm. It's not until halfway further on that we encounter "I'll Remember August," a sly allusion to the standard "I'll Remember April," which includes an infectious Towner piano solo and urgent keening from McCandless.
The CD closes on the Jim Pepper classic "Witchi-Tai-To," a stunningly beautiful melody taken from Oregon's early catalog and richly deserving jazz standard status, to be played much earlier and far more often. But despite the near painful precision of both McCandless' and Towner's lines, the tune deserves less navel-gazing introspection and more performance-enhancing protein than provided here.
Overall, Live at Yoshi's contains a surfeit of sweetness and light, punctuated with occasional displays of game fitness.
—Jonathan B. Frey
Norah Jones
Come Away With Me (Blue Note)
The first line of the first tune is all that's required for Jones' voice to captivate. Simultaneously compressed and light, with perfect yet effortless timing, it's a voice at turns affectless and provocative. Combined with a style that drifts comfortably among folk, country, and blues genres alike, mining that middle American motherlode, an intriguing listen it indeed makes.
Jones' delivery works particularly well on the first tune, "Don't Know Why," where she coolly narrates a lover's inexplicable perfidy, the near absence of emotion in her voice soliciting the listener to fill the void. And on Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart," one of the few covers recorded here, the precious objectivity works well, again in a beckoning way.
But it can get tedious, tune after tune, almost all medium to slow tempi, even when varied with overdubs, an accordion, or a violin. At such times Jones' sexy stridency on "Turn Me On" and the tricky torch lyric of "I've Got to See You Again" are refreshing for their novelty in delivery or lyric content.
Given the down-home material, it's surprising to find Bill Frisell on only one tune, phoning in his elliptical guitar comping and a brief solo on "The Long Day Is Over." On the other hand, ordinarily frenetic drummer Brian Blade is an odd choice in this setting and is curiously subdued for most cuts; however he is thankfully permitted to purr away on "Nightingale," the only tune that breaks a sweat on this promising yet at times deliberate debut.
—Jonathan B. Frey
October 10, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 41
© 2002 Metro Pulse
| 
