Gist Is
England’s Adult Jazz recall Boston’s Gem Club: the music is thoughtful, spare, experimental, both serene and unsettling, and at times heartbreakingly beautiful. Where Gem Club are a duo (with cello, piano, and voice), Adult Jazz are four musicians, and their electronic washes and drones get equal play with percussion (both lumbering and spidery), keyboards of varying kinds, horns, and vocals that morph from quiet to jazzily swinging, depending on a tune’s direction at any given moment. They have a playful core, which sparkles with a wry and childlike wit on “Am Gone” and a degree of melancholia on “Springful,” with its springy bed of guitar notes and clattering bones. Harry Burgess’ falsetto is utterly beguiling; the stunning seven minutes of “Hum” showcases Burgess’ limber delivery and remarkable grace, and on the more lighthearted “Donne Tongue,” acerbic lashes surprise and lend the tune another facet. The nine-minute “Spook” is a mini-epic of horns, drums, guitars, and vocal ups and downs that are wrought as a floating, buoyant, cabaret tune.
Leeds-based quartet Adult Jazz's debut album is full of formally convoluted songs which seldom run shy of five minutes, and feature plenty of brisk, ponderous guitar figures and difficult-to-parse drumbeats. It's full of clever turns of musical and lyrical phrase which will dispel possible accusations of self-indulgence and pretention, and yet somehow, with a few listens, it's easy to enjoy this unusually paced album.
Leeds-based quartet Adult Jazz's debut album is full of formally convoluted songs which seldom run shy of five minutes, and feature plenty of brisk, ponderous guitar figures and difficult-to-parse drumbeats. It's full of clever turns of musical and lyrical phrase which will dispel possible accusations of self-indulgence and pretention, and yet somehow, with a few listens, it's easy to enjoy this unusually paced album.
Throw open your windows to the summer and welcome the airy, improvisational debut album from Leeds' Adult Jazz.
Throw open your windows to the summer and welcome the airy, improvisational debut album from Leeds' Adult Jazz.
If every substitute teacher acted as Harry Burgess, the world would be much more willing to redefine pop.
If every substitute teacher acted as Harry Burgess, the world would be much more willing to redefine pop.
There's something reluctant about Adult Jazz's debut LP. The four-piece, Leeds Uni alumni and students of Joanna Newsom, Van Morrison and Animal Collective, have taken their time to craft nine songs of enduring scope and warmth, despite seeming to vaguely resent the idea of making it. While songs like Spook swell and meander, tugging the heartstrings in all the right places, they're hobbled by distractible lyrics that would rather deconstruct the anthemic impulse than sate it.
There's something reluctant about Adult Jazz's debut LP. The four-piece, Leeds Uni alumni and students of Joanna Newsom, Van Morrison and Animal Collective, have taken their time to craft nine songs of enduring scope and warmth, despite seeming to vaguely resent the idea of making it. While songs like Spook swell and meander, tugging the heartstrings in all the right places, they're hobbled by distractible lyrics that would rather deconstruct the anthemic impulse than sate it.
As a band name, Adult Jazz is a pretty solid choice, and one that hints at the many contradictions twisted up in the music of this Leeds-bas...
As a band name, Adult Jazz is a pretty solid choice, and one that hints at the many contradictions twisted up in the music of this Leeds-bas...
Let's get this out of the way right at the beginning; Adult Jazz sound like the prodigy child of Dirty Projectors and alt-J. But that's not enough. Their album, Gist Is, is a meticulously-produced contender for most surprising debut in recent memory. They
Let's get this out of the way right at the beginning; Adult Jazz sound like the prodigy child of Dirty Projectors and alt-J. But that's not enough. Their album, Gist Is, is a meticulously-produced contender for most surprising debut in recent memory. They