My Only Secret

Approfondimenti

Even with their already experimental, genre-crossing approach to jazz, Portland's Blue Cranes have ever more unique ways to expand their sound. They employed a string quartet for 2013's Swim and collaborated with vocalists on 2021's Voices. While 2023's My Only Secret finds them returning to their core instrumental line-up, it's just as harmonically inventive and genre-bending as anything the group has done before. Once again featured is the dual tenor and alto saxophone front-line of Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham, along with keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn, bassist Jon Shaw, and drummer Ji Tanzer. Also contributing at various times are trombonist James Powers, flutist John Savage, clarinetist Nicole McCabe, and guitarist Timothy Young. There's an evocative, imagistic quality to much of the album exemplified by the opening "Sloan," whose insistent minor-key piano and glassy synth lines sound like the soundtrack to a '70s sci-fi or thriller production for the BBC. Just as evocative is "Sandbox" with its blown-out Rhodes keyboard riff, handclaps, ringing school bell, and children's slide whistle; all of which has the effect of Stereolab playing out elementary school children on their last day before summer vacation. More imagistic notions arrive with "Semicircle," a flowing modal jazz number marked by a woody bass and drum groove and eerie synthesizer accents that has the feeling of Pharoah Sanders welcoming an alien spacecraft to earth. There's also a contemporary classical influence running through the album, as on "Forward," where the group's refracted lines have the repeated echo effect of the work of composer Philip Glass. Similarly, the album ending "Lonely Coyote" starts with a sparkle of analog synths, like northern lights over a desert landscape, before erupting into a harmonic dust cloud of screaming sax and percussion. All of this image-inducing music has the sensory impact of a nature documentary, like Koyaanisqatsi, and My Only Secret proves just as enrapturing.

© Matt Collar /TiVo