Maternity Beat

Album review

Hedvig Mollestad's music changed direction with 2020's Ekhidna, a conceptual offering about the Greek goddess. While she didn't end her longstanding trio, she put it on recording hiatus. 2021's Tempest Revisited had roots in a 2018 live performance commemorating the 25th anniversary of composer Arne Nordheim's world renown ballet, Tempest. Maternity Beat is a suite commissioned by and debuted at Molde Jazz Festival in July 2020 and livestreamed across Europe. This studio recording was made in collaboration with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Also conceptual, its themes reflect her recent experiences in motherhood, and offer meditations on the pressing social, political, economic, and climate issues affecting mothers, children, and family. In addition to TJO, Mollestad employs longtime drummer Torstein Lofthus and vocalists Mai Elise Solberg and Ingebjorg Loe Bornstadt. (This is the first time she's used singers.) In addition to playing her trademark exploratory guitar, she composed and arranged the work.
"On the Horizon, Pt. 1" offers a subdued drone intro before the singers, in layered harmony, ask repeatedly, "Is there a boat on the horizon?" Strings, winds, and reeds offer an elliptical backdrop as the singers layer harmonies and counterpoint. The second part commences with a knotty Mollestad guitar vamp framed by Lofthus's dancing cymbals and snare. Reeds, brass, and winds fold in just before the wordless chorus enters. Petter Kraft's reverbed soprano sax solo prefigures Mollestad's own. As the tune wanders, it recalls Grand Wazoo-era Frank Zappa. "Do Re Mi Ma Ma" is offered as a noir-ish jazz-blues led by a walking bassline and adorned with Mollestad's fluid lines. It explodes into a rhapsodic crescendo of horns, winds, and saxes, then mutates into wild jazz-rock-fusion games. "Donna Ovis Peppa" balances Mollestad's notions of jazz harmony in a rhythmically dazzling approach that delves into nocturnal electric funk and incendiary electric jazz drama. Mollestad's playing is forceful, authoritative, and usually assonant, no matter the complexity.
The interplay with TJO is unshakeable and often surprising. The title-track closer commences with fingerpicked ambient guitars and floating keys that give way to angular winds, horns, reeds, and drums before the layers commingle in lilting reverie. Its second half is raucous metallic. Introduced by power chords and pummeling drums and bass, TJO enters inside a minute and creates a pulsing, deep-grooving meld of jazz and classical harmony amid the blazing hard rock and soaring choral vocals. Closer "Maternity Beat Suite" offers four sections, each more frenetic and tonally ambitious than its predecessor, with ample room to solo among the ensemble members. Mollestad's guitar playing is as inspired as it is musically sophisticated. In short, Maternity Beat is a collaborative wonder and the most important album in either Mollestad's or TJO's catalogs. Together, they sustain the concept with stellar execution and enviable focus. They simultaneously impart joy, drama, and intensity with inspiration, remarkable technique, and sheer grit.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo