JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:


As musically rigorous a release as you would expect from Chris Potter, Traveling Mercies is perhaps a touch too rigorous. The tunes are arranged within an inch of their lives, the rhythms so exacting that there is barely room for the musicians to breathe. Which doesn’t mean that Traveling Mercies isn’t a good record. It is. It’s just that the anal tendencies of Potter keep it from being truly great. Potter is at an age where he is still intent on making masterpieces every time out. When he gets a little older, he’ll probably loosen up a little.

But in the meantime, there is a great deal to enjoy about Traveling Mercies. That same tendency to over arrange and over compose makes for very interesting, challenging music. Potter knows exactly what he wants to say and says it with exactitude. His melodies aren’t exactly hummable or memorable, but somehow, when the arrangements are this rich, the soundscapes this varied, the execution so intense, and the musical performances so assured, it doesn’t really matter a whole lot.

Potter makes the interesting decision to frontload Traveling Mercies with his most challenging tunes. The opener Megalopolis starts out with a swirl of samples and keyboard textures before fading away under Potter’s heavily syncopated, gently funky pentatonic riff on sax, with the rhythm section of Scott Colley (bass), Bill Stewart (drums), and Kevin Hays (keyboards) grinding out a chunky and complex time signature behind him. Guest guitarist John Scofield takes a solo, showing what a pro he is by not sounding the least bit constricted by the intricate web of sound wrapped around him.

For Snake Oil, Potter slows down and gets even funkier. The A section is polytonal, with the bass playing in one key and the horns playing in another entirely, similarly to what Wayne Shorter did on his masterful tune Predator (see my post Domino Theory - Weather Report). The B section abandons the polyphony of the first section but retains the lumbering time signature, which makes it seem like the tune is going to fall over any second. Potter’s solo, while not terribly lyrical, makes up for it with it’s steely logic and rhythmic acuity. Speaking of rhythmic acuity, Bill Stewart’s drum solo on Snake Oil is a thing of beauty. His solo possesses the lyricism that Potter lacks, quite an accomplishment for a drummer. He manages this feat while soloing over the brutally complex form of the tune.

Potter finally eases up a bit on the spiritual Children Go, which starts off with his unaccompanied saxophone solo. Potter is expert at evoking a rhythmic pattern with a single note line, and his mastery doesn’t desert him here. The band cranks up the tempo to a medium burn and basically turns this spiritual into a modal tune. The band shows what it can do when Potter isn’t calling all the shots and providing a detailed arrangement. The drummer and bassist keep the pulse going while the saxophonist Potter and pianist Scott Hays play free, both in a harmonic and rhythmic sense, frequently subdividing the rhythms, playing over the bar line, employing out harmonies, chord substitutions and passing tones.

With Migrations, we’re back to Chris Potter’s iron grip. Even on a ballad like this one, his control is unrelenting. He has the bassist playing rhythmic written parts. It’s almost as if Potter is aspiring to Wayne Shorter’s compositional style from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, where Shorter pretty much wrote out 95% of the music, with the exception of the solos. Somehow, it feels like there’s less room in Potter’s arrangements than Shorter’s. But then again, Potter is totally obsessed with groove, which is pretty standard for a musician of his generation, having been raised on hiphop — it fits him like a straightjacket.

I feel a little bad being so tough on Potter. After all, he’s taken the time to absorb jazz history and he can play his ass off. He is the last thing from being lazy in terms of both his compositions and his arrangements. He’s surrounded himself with players who are strong at the very least, and sometimes outright masters on their instruments.

I must be getting old. That’s why I get a little impatient with Potter’s constant push to have the grooves be tighter, more complex, always pushing, always straining for excellence. It wears me out and I’m not even doing the work. But I can’t deny that he’s a good musician, and that Traveling Mercies is a good album, and I wouldn’t want to. We need people like Chris Potter to carry forward the jazz tradition.

God bless you, Chris, and lighten up, please.

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