New York based tenor saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis is as open-minded a jazz musician as they come. In the past two years alone, he has reimagined singer and activist Mahalia Jackson’s gospel tunes in a contemporary jazz key with his Red Lily quintet (For Mahalia, With Love), explored the aggressive edges of free jazz (Eye Of I), and dived into the deep end of muscular fusion in collaboration with experimental punk trio The Messthetics. Although Lewis cites 2015’s Days Of FreeMan as a spiritual precursor to Apple Cores, his latest trio outing primarily expands on his recent works.
In particular, the new album carries the torch of reinvigorated jazz rock that was lit on last year’s electrifying The Messthetics And James Brandon Lewis, but with its punk energy now transmuted into a soulful groove. Still, his long-time collaborators Chad Taylor (drums) and Josh Werner (electric bass and guitar) can jam just as hard as The Messthetics’ Fugazi-powered rhythm section when needed. Proof of their intensity arrives swiftly, as they join in a hermetically sealed lockstep to announce the propulsive opener ‘Apple Cores #1’.
Taylor and Werner’s rhythms land somewhere between heavy prog stomp and hiphop beats. They pummel away, Dennis Chambers-style, evoking massive machinery laying down a backdrop for Lewis to unfurl his most melodic, bluesy lines. Here and elsewhere, he blows his tenor with conviction and power, substantiating comparisons with Joe Henderson and David S. Ware as he strings together ever silkier melodies. Simultaneously, in response to the material’s smoother contours, he stops short from unleashing the sky-tearing licks that can be heard when he plays with The Messthetics or on Hoff Mendoza Revels’ Echolocation.
Although named after a series of columns that Amiri Baraka wrote for DownBeat in the 1960s, the record gestures towards a conceptual homage to another great, Don Cherry, with track titles like ‘Remember Brooklyn & Moki’ and ‘Five Spots To Caravan’ directly referencing the trumpeter’s life and art. A similar multiplicity is mirrored in Lewis’s music. Ever the erudite, he considers multiple strains of thought and influence, both historical and contemporary, then reconfigures them into something new. ‘Broken Shadows’, for instance, is an inspired take on Ornette Coleman’s 1971/1982 cut, complete with snaking melodies and a faint trace of Middle Eastern modes.
Aside from this cover, all other pieces on Apple Cores were collectively and spontaneously composed over two improvised sessions, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell this from the music’s razor-sharp focus. ‘Prince Eugene’ diffuses its predecessor’s cadenced heft into looser structures and syncopations. Here, the clocklike tones of Taylor’s marimba dance along Werner’s blooming undertow and wah-wahs, while Lewis articulates a series of poignant phrases. This stands in stark contrast to the insistently cyclical, nervous skronk that floats over ‘Five Spots To Caravan’ with its pumping, hammered out drum patterns and plump electric bass.
The vibrations of shakers and hand drums form a texture that gives ‘Remember Brooklyn & Moki’ a vaguely overcast Afrobeat vibe, while ‘D.C. Got Pocket’ momentarily resembles Zamrock’s heady psychedelia only to untether and become a pulsating avant jazz thing. Elsewhere, the flowing balladry of ‘Dont’ Forget Jayne’ – dedicated to poet Jayne Cortez – emerges robed in glorious spiritual jazz of the Alice and John Coltrane sort. But the trio’s real triumph is found by looking at the bigger picture, discerning the elegant way in which they connect the ends of these disparate threads, shaping a close-knit, immensely enjoyable whole.
