During the summer of 2019, Bob James met Till Brönner at La Fabrique, a residential studio located inside a 200-year-old mansion in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. Intent on relaxing while making music, they sought to mentally transport listeners (and themselves) to places and spaces they wanted to travel to on vacation. Using a rotating cast of studio aces in their rhythm section, they deliver a carefully curated program of originals, covers, and standards.
Buddy Johnson's classic "Save Your Love for Me" opens with a languid shuffle. Brönner's flügelhorn offers the melody with elegance and warm trills as James adorns the changes gracefully with his grand piano. Drummer Harvey Mason carries the shuffle with double bassist Christian Von Kaphengst accenting the downbeat. Brönner's "Lemonade" is a tender, jaunty samba with James on electric piano. The composer contributes trumpet, keyboards, and airy vocals -- with phrasing derived directly from Michael Franks. James' "Late Night" is a wonderfully expressionist engagement with harmony, fluid rhythms, and subtly articulated melodic hooks. Brönner's "Lavender Fields" is the most speculative number here, employing a nocturnal swing, pillowy keyboard strings, hovering electric piano, and warm, liquidy reverbed flügelhorn. Only James' acoustic piano solo keeps it from floating away. The inclusion of Gilbert Becaud's and Neil Diamond's "September Morn" feels out of place here (though it is the single). Its tortoise-like pace is slower than the original's, and the saccharine sweetness in Brönner's playing is almost wince-inducing. The slippery smooth funk groove in James' "Elysium" could easily have come off one of the pianist's mid-'80s chart-toppers. Its inviting resonance is underscored by a finely wrought muted trumpet solo from Brönner. The cover of "I Get It from You" (by forgotten 20th century L.A. yacht poppers Pages), is an unexpected delight. Its fingerpopping chart includes Brönner swinging the lyrics and James adding sparkling fills and canny melodic articulations, topped by a grooving bassline and a swooping trumpet break. The pianist follows with the spectral, emotionally hefty waltz "Miranda," using Brönner's muted horn in sparse melodic phrases above syncopated harmonic changes. The trumpeter's slow groover "Scent of Childhood" is likely to be sampled often for Brönner's bluesy playing entwined with James' meaty chords. While Brönner sounds like he's having a ball singing on the title track, it's James' sprightly, weave of organ and electric piano filling out the groove that carries his lyrics, and thus the tune, home. The set bookend is another standard: A restrained read of Spencer Johnson's nugget "Basin Street Blues." The interplay between primaries is tender, even sweet (absent are any traces of Louis Armstrong or Jack Teagarden), yet its accents, fills, and interjections are colorful and in impeccable taste. On the surface, On Vacation, might seem slight upon first listen. Further investigation reveals an abundance of sophisticated melodic invention and classy, intuitive arrangements that expand on and underscore the album's intended, good-time feel.