In 2016, drummer, composer and bandleader
Ches Smith enlisted violist
Mat Maneri and pianist
Craig Taborn for a one-off gig in New York. The collective language they discovered in rehearsal and on-stage led
Smith to write for the trio. They issued
The Bell for
ECM that year. Guitarist
Bill Frisell caught a late 2018 gig and contacted
Smith; the guitarist performed with them in early 2020. During the COVID-19 shutdown, the drummer was writing but otherwise idle. He rightly reckoned that the usually over-scheduled
Taborn and
Maneri might be sitting on their hands, too. In October 2020, this quartet recorded for two days with producer
David Breskin and engineers
Ron Saint Germain and
Ryan Streber.
Interpret It Well's title was adopted from a 1987 Raymond Pettibon drawing that adorns the cover. The illustration: A few telephone poles, a farmstead, and a railroad track with an unspecific swirling, foreboding figure looming. It reflects the music, as
Smith's compositions are loosely narrative yet non-linear, leaving abundant room for creative exploration. Bookended by two short, eerie interludes, four of the remaining five tunes are all over ten minutes. The 13-plus-minute title track reveals the quartet's improv potential. Ostinato phrasing is articulated by
Taborn and
Smith -- the latter plays vibes in addition to a kit throughout.
Frisell and
Maneri add episodic phrases, accents, and expansive harmonies, heightening the tension.
Smith switches to drums, leading his partners into more forceful, dramatic exchanges. He and
Taborn move along a repetitive chordal pattern as
Frisell and
Maneri ratchet the jam into more intense terrain. "Mixed Metaphor" is introduced by the guitarist's modal blues phrasing.
Maneri's electronically altered viola frames him while expanding the tonal center.
Taborn offers fat, dark chords to buoy them both as
Smith's vibes whisper along the margins before he exchanges them for his kit and
Taborn winds an angular progression around his bandmates as
Maneri takes off in wildly imaginative solo flight. "Morbid" is an amorphous tone poem with a limited harmonic palette governed by gesture and near-ambient dynamics. "Clear Major" is propelled from the start with dynamic force.
Frisell and
Maneri surge across
Taborn's ropey, muscular patterns and
Smith's frenetic beats before collectively disassembling into cacophonous free play. After exhausting their possibilities, individual gestures gradually find one another and cohere into reconstructed group interplay before a sideways groove from the pianist and guitarist reintroduce the theme. The intro to "I Need More" is almost
Monk-esque. As
Maneri and
Taborn offer a complex modal melody,
Frisell quotes from
Ellington, Chicago blues, and West Coast psychedelia á la
Quicksilver Messenger Service's
John Cipollina. The pianist shakes and quakes in a dissonant left-handed solo before luring his bandmates to engage in lyric interplay.
Frisell delivers a searing solo as an introduction to the tune's nadir, and the group joins him in a majestic conclusion.
Interpret It Well is a first-rate exercise in collective music making, at once instinctual, disciplined, and massively sophisticated. ~ Thom Jurek