An album launch party can be an abstract concept, no different from another gig on a long tour. But this particular album launch party, celebrating the release of Alison Shearer’s In The Garden, with hazelnut cake gratis and guest appearances from friends-collaborators, felt different.
In The Garden is a multi-faceted jazz album which jumps between vicious time signatures, mystical chord sequences and songs that make you want to stomp your feet. (You can read NYS Music’s review of the album here).
Shearer, accompanied by Horace Philips (drums), Christian Li (keys) and Marty Kenney (bass), ran through the album, plus a couple of numbers from the group’s previous album View From Above, more or less sequentially. Opening track ‘Liberty Market’, inspired by a marketplace in Lahore, sets out Shearer’s stall: it is hard not to hear, listening to these punchy piano stabs, a techno influence in the album. This would work – it does work – in a nightclub.
‘Sophie’s World’ follows, named for a favorite philosophy book from Shearer’s “nerdy” childhood. This label makes sense: there is mystery in its chord progressions. The group sound excellent in this space, with its reverse in-the-round structure and its disconcertingly blue-free lighting.
Before ‘But Not For Now’ the group share a telepathic conference to agree on time signatures. Philips seems to dissociate for a moment, checking he remembers what seven means. Frankly, watching him undergird Shearer’s swooping, tricky compositions (he is the mulch in this garden, if you will), who can blame him?
‘But Not For Now’ cuts without breath into ‘Homer’ in one of the most gratifying moments of the night. ‘Homer’ has the kind of bassline that stops you nodding your head and makes you start carelessly shaking it – side to side, like a mad Newton’s cradle. Just as I am realizing what is happening, a woman swoops past me to thrust out a slice of hazelnut cake and I forget myself again. (It was delicious.)
Alison Shearer has a relaxed, slightly awkward stage presence (a jazz musician, in other words). She comes alive when blowing into – at times wrestling with, it seems like – her instrument. While her solos are the main event, they avoid the slightly rote, stale inevitability of a group passing round the baton. The songs are too well crafted; her solos have too much to say.
‘In The Garden’ is opened by Kenney, his bass and his array of pedals. He spends a minute noodling out strange chords (you can hear the double bass player in him), and we sleepwalk through the garden he scuplts, through a cloud of fireflies and the sounds of running water.
At this point Shearer invites to the stage old friend and collaborator Wayne Tucker to perform ‘Cycles’, the highlight of previous album View From Above (and possibly of her discography). The track’s hypnotic breakdown sounds like euphoria bottled, annealed in brass and vibrated at just the right frequencies to pull you about like a puppet.
After another song with Tucker, Shearer brings back support act Miranda Joan to sing ‘Breathe Again’. (“Goddamnit,” says someone in the crowd appropriately). Joan’s supporting jazz-neosoul-comedy routine was beautiful, and ‘Breathe Again’ was a resplendent highlight of the evening.
After a few more tracks from In The Garden that showed as much range and power as those that came before (we finally got a delicious drum solo), we headed out into the East Village mist, our stomachs full of cake and our ears humming in delight.
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