My review of John Scofield's exceptional Country for Old Men, today at All About Jazz.
Aside from the playing - with Sco, Larry Goldings, Steve Swallow & Bill Stewart, how can it be anything but exceptional? - this album, along with his previous Impulse! debut, Past Present, have taken a big leap forward sonically, and positively sing on my Tetra-based system. Definitely a great test disc if you're looking for new gear (and if you are, you ought to be considering Tetra, the most truthful speaker I've ever heard).
Now, for the start of the review....
When guitarist Bill Frisell first began a more decided focus on roots music, bluegrass and country & western music with the release of 1996's Nashville (Nonesuch), despite being largely very well-received, jazz purists rankled when the largely bluegrass/folk-informed album began to garner awards like Downbeat Magazine's Best Jazz Album of the Year. While Frisell's oftentimes Americana-tinged work has, in the ensuing years, become more fully accepted for the wonderful music that it is, fellow six-stringer John Scofield is unlikely to find himself the subject of such purist criticism with Country for Old Men. A play on the Coen Brothers' acclaimed 2007 film No Country for Old Men, a reference to the vast majority of source material on Scofield's first album of entirely non-original music since 2005's That's What I Say: John Scofield Plays The Music Of Ray Charles (Verve), and a not-so-subtle reminder that the 64 year-old guitarist isn't getting any younger, Country for Old Men may demonstrate his clear love of music from songwriters including George Jones, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton and Bob Wills, but it is still unequivocally a jazz record...one that may have a touch of twang but also swings mightily on nearly half of its twelve songs.
Scofield may be approaching the midpoint of his seventh decade on earth, but maintains an active touring schedule and a pretty reasonable certainty that fans can expect at least one new album every year. Still, beyond culling its material from genre that many jazz fans hate with a vengeance, that the guitarist is releasing another jazz album back-to-back with the 2016 Grammy Award-winning reunion with saxophonist Joe Lovano on his superb Impulse! Records debut, Past Present (2015)--which turned into one of the 2016 TD Ottawa Jazz Festival's most memorable performances. It breaks a long streak of alternating between jam band records like 2013's Überjam Deux (EmArcy, 2013) and concept albums like his Ray Charles tribute and the blues/New Orleans-informed Piety Street (EmArcy, 2009), with more decidedly jazz-oriented albums including his collaboration with composer/arranger Vince Mendoza and the Metropole Orkest, 54 (EmArcy, 2010) and smaller but no-less ambitious albums like the particularly exceptional This Meets That (EmArcy, 2007) and EnRoute (Verve, 2004).
Still, at this point in his life and career, Scofield can pretty much do as he pleases and, not unlike This Meets That--which shares the same longstanding trio of longtime bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Stewart but is, this time, fleshed out to a quartet with the addition of another evergreen musical compatriot, keyboardist Larry Goldings--what makes Country for Old Men such a captivating listen is that it brings together many of the guitarist's core loves: the blues (which has always been a part of his DNA in any context, with his thick, gritty tone and distinctive bends); singer/songwriters like James Taylor, whose "Bartender Blues," first heard on 1977's JT (Columbia), is given a gently balladic treatment; traditional folk music like "Wayfaring Stranger," which is delivered New Orleans style, with Stewart's near-Second Line support; and, of course, plenty of bop-informed jazz, in particular Sco's ability to build relentless tension and release by moving harmonically "outside," only to bring things back "inside" with the unerring jazz equivalent of a great comedian's perfect timing.
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