Spring Heel Jack - The Sweetness Of The Water

Thirsty Ear Blue Series 57146.2

Spring Heel Jack is certainly no stranger to change and diversity. Anyone who knows John Coxon and Ashley Wales' 1990's work probably also witnessed the astonishing shift in sound and compositional technique which accompanied their move to Thirsty Ear some four years ago.

This is not to say that the sonic modifications were completely unheralded. Eclecticism was an SHJ trait from the start, and it only increased as their discography grew. Their first album, There Are Strings, certainly demonstrated a strong Orbital allegiance; the typically Orbitalesque triadic harmonic gestures, sweeping synth patches and melodic earworms were there in abundance, but the avant-garde kept creeping into the lush harmonies and catchy tunes. Ashley Wales' classical approach to composition undoubtedly fueled an adventurous streak, and by 1997's Busy, Curious Thirsty, dissonantly stacked pianos, hard-edged beats and fuzzy synth-bass were constants. As a backdrop for these sonic experiments, jazz-inflected saxophone and trumpet solos, somewhat reminiscent of those on Digable Planets' Blowout Comb, began to infiltrate the duo's soundscapes, sounding refreshingly live as they floated over the frenetically repeated rhythms.

The duo had begun down the path of no return. Their sound pallet increased, the solos got longer, and the beats often vanished for lengthy stretches of time--the albums Treader and Disappeared exploring these expanded sonic and compositional landscapes. The drum-‘n-bass and dub roots of their early output finally gave way to free but focused jazz-rock leanings on Masses, Amassed and Live, all recorded for Thirsty Ear. The group began to make extensive use of live collaborators—veterans Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp and "Spaceman" Jason Pierce among them—and their contributions were then re-configured in the studio by Coxon and Wales. Certainly, the customary electronic manipulations and juxtapositions were still there, but the first three Thirsty Ear discs alternately soothed and pummeled with walls of solid sound and equally colorful silence; the rhythms were often internal, resulting from the impossibly dense overlay of acoustic instruments, whereas much of the duo's earlier material afforded some breathing room—not a lot, but some—between propulsive beats and breaks.

With The Sweetness of the Water, SHJ's sound has changed again, even if the core membership remains the same. Coxon and Wales, again with Evan Parker on saxophone, are now supplemented by Wadada Leo Smith's trumpet, Mark Sanders on drums and John Edwards on bass. To hear the many Smith and Parker exchanges throughout the album is heart-stopping, so transcendent is their communication; each solo or dialogue is accompanied with absolute sensitivity by the other musicians. The track labeled "Quintet" is quintessential in that it lays these processes bare, and each sound—brush strokes, Coxon's guitar-driven samples, each mesmerizing phrase by Smith and Parker—would seem out of place anywhere else. This disc is clearly a group effort, a beautiful venture into collective improvisation of the free jazz variety.

This is the album's greatest strength and its inherent weakness. The other three recent SHJ discs were special—the Thirsty Ear Blue Series is special—because they attempted to defy simple categorization. The pieces on Sweetness come in two varieties, one with chords and one without. "Lata" and "Autumn" exemplify the former, while "Track 4" (really track 1, don't ask me) and "Quintet" resemble nothing so much as Wadada's recently re-released Kabell ruminations. As fresh as Smith's early 1970's work still is, it has become archetypal, and I believed that boundary blurring was SHJ's modus operandi.

Only "Autumn" boasts the brash sonic explorations, the probing and swirling harmonies and pregnant silences which set the duo apart from so many. Smith's lyrical musings hang over vast harmonic abysses, all fades to black, new polytonal vistas are open only to be traversed, and the process begins again. Is that an electronically manipulated Smith trumpet I hear after the opening chords? "Autumn" stands as a testament to what the album might have been, a newly freed SHJ with disembodied but wise and liberated voices guiding and reacting in an electronically induced miasma. It brings together the sweep and space of their earliest work with the innovations gained from nine years of growth. Predictability, not lack of care or musicianship, causes the rest of the album to be less than satisfying. I hope that Sweetness is a precursor to even finer efforts.

~ Marc Medwin