Anthem of Unity

Album review

Anthem of Unity is guitarist Joel Harrison's 25th outing as a leader. His catalog reflects a kaleidoscopic approach to writing and arranging that employs variety in concept, genre, and harmonic and rhythmic invention. The three-volume Free Country series (that began in 2003) showcases covers and originals associated with country and Americana music. 2019's Still Point - Turning World offered a simultaneous exploration of spiritual jazz, Indian Carnatic music, free improv, and post-bop. 2020's America at War was a musical mediation on militarism and national identity that wed rock, jazz, funk, and improvisation. 2022's Joel Harrison & the Stardust Reunion Band contained a program of original rock and R&B songs delivered by various singers. While Anthem of Unity bears Harrison's unmistakable playing signature, the music is, in essence, a blowing session showcasing a stellar quartet working across post-bop, soul jazz, funk hard bop, and blues. Harrison's sidemen include drummer Jack DeJohnette, saxophonist/flutist Greg Tardy, and Gary Versace on Hammond B-3. The title track opener was inspired by a late mentor, guitarist Mick Goodrick (who also worked with DeJohnette). Composed the day before the session, the tune's architecture weds a NOLA second-line organ and drum groove that crisscrosses gospel. Tardy joins Harrison in melodic interplay and, chorus by chorus, it becomes joyfully, poignantly transcendent. "Survival Instinct" is noirish post-bop with a knotty, blue-tinged head and dazzling backbeat work from DeJohnette. There are two standards included in the track list: Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin" is rendered in skittering waltz time as Tardy and Harrison harmonize the melody with grace and subtlety. Sonny Rollins' "Doxy" is delivered with a layer of easy, gritty NOLA jazz-funk, (think the Meters with Alvin "Red" Tyler joining on tenor sax). Harrison's solo is all lue funk, and his greasy interplay with Tardy and DeJohnette is as canny as it is welcoming. "Today Is Tomorrow's Yesterday" is a fleet, knotty post-bop groover with killer solos from Tardy and Versace. The first minute and a half of "Parvati" is a furious drum solo before Harrison's composition weds Carnatic modalism to Americana and swinging post-bop. The interlocked engagement by Versace, Tardy, and Harrison is outlined and given heady rhythmic ballast by DeJohnette's frenetic playing. "Migratory Birds" features Tardy on flute hovering over wafting, proggish organ; sparse, nocturnal guitar lines; and propulsive, dynamically controlled beats. Closer "Mohawk Valley Peace Dance" is a funky, rock-based stroller that sounds like Booker T & the MG's meeting War as a riffing B-3's joins reverbed, psychedelic, wah-wah guitars atop Tardy's souled-out, wildly exploratory saxophone and Harrison's bluesy, funky vamps. While "groove" and feel are central to all eight tunes on Anthem of Unity, rhythmic and harmonic invention in the group's interplay add heft, hooks, textual dimension, and balance.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo