An improviser’s lot always seems to entail some bout with obscurity, so much so that harping about any accompanying inequities has long since become cliché. Vocalist Fay Victor has yet to find full ingress from the fringe, but that’s not stopping her from plying her art in as uncompromising a manner as possible. Part of her low profile stems from an expatriate hiatus in Holland that ended in 2003, but no before she established strong ties to New Dutch Swing. Lazy Old Sun, her last disc as a leader, dropped about the time of her return and caught the ears of a checkerboard demographic, modest in number, but extroverted in their praise.
The colorfully titled Cartwheels Through the Cosmos tumbles out even further afield than its predecessor. Victor’s backing trio is a formidable one fronted by guitarist Anders Nilsson who plugs into a stack of amps and brings with him a forceful rock edge. Bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Michael TA Thompson are the founts of further muscle. This sort of chance-taking brio hearkens to one of the singer’s early influences, the late great Betty Carter. Although it’s admittedly difficult to conjecture Carter coming up with some of the sounds here.
Victor’s voice is as distinctive and pliable as her songwriting. Her lyrics don’t cleave to set metric patterns and neither does her delivery. “Leap of Faith” contrasts her lush, almost sultry, inflections with the molten combination of Nilsson’s fishhook fret play and Thompson’s punch press percussion. Filiano squeezes gigantic amplified bass lines within the fissures and it all makes for a bracing performance. “Exchange Rate” reels back the instrumental violence to a simmering backdrop, Victor’s singing once again supplying a cool center that recalls Nina Simone in its reverent recounting of African-oriented imagery. There’s humor too. The apocalyptic sentiments at the heart of “It’s Coming,” play out atop a breezy bossa rhythm. Victor strays into Sun Ra territory in the song’s second act, blithely recounting her extraterrestrial activities in the wake of Planet Earth’s inevitable demise.
All but two pieces eclipse six minutes and the wide canvases open up lots of space for the instruments to paint, whether as ensemble or sans Victor. Thompson and Filiano show off chops on “Spin”, the former in a prefatory solo and the latter in a Laswellian solo that clashes with Nilsson for amplified string supremacy. Sometimes the loquacity proves a hindrance, the players reveling a bit too much in their shared gregariousness. Parts of the consciously bombastic “Along the Winding Way,” for example, grate rather than endear. “Pillow on My Ear” and “Stray Dogs” are well-sequenced exceptions where the warm peregrinations of Victor’s pipes keep even the rangiest and woolly constructions of her partners in welcome check. Despite several subjective excesses, Victor succeeds in adapting her voice to a fresh and challenging setting. The shift will hopefully encourage a bevy of new listeners to partake of her efforts right along with the old. If her MySpace page is any indication, such an outcome is already underway.
~ Derek Taylor
Posted by derek on January 5, 2007 6:35 AM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................