Led Bib

London, Purcell Room

28/02/2011

There’s a real sense lately of impetus building behind Led Bib’s hitherto rather leisurely pace of development . The excitement generated by the Mercury nomination for their last album, “Sensible Shoes”, hasn’t been as anticlimactic after their failure to win as it has been for certain other non-winners (and winners, come to that), since the weight of commercial expectation weighs less heavily on jazz nominees. Led Bib have accentuated the positive and capitalized on the heightened awareness the nomination generated, and attempted with their latest effort, “Bring Your Own”, to take stock and achieve distillation of their achievements to date. That their new music is characterized by relative brevity and accessibility is surely no coincidental quirk of compositional inclination, but rather a shrewd reaction to opportunity.

This concert, at the smallest of the South Bank Centre’s three venues, was the official launch night for “Bring Your Own”, though the album was released a full month earlier. It was also the first night of a short tour of the UK and EU. The night’s two sets drew exclusively from the new album, with the sole exception of the eventual encore, which was, as usual, “Flashing Indicator”, from the 2005 album Arboretum. It’s a sure sign of Led Bib’s maturity that this old favourite would prove arguably the weakest number of the night.

Bring Your Own’s tight focus has Led Bib paring away some of their influences for a less discursive sound, its songbook compacted into renditions that seldom run to more than a radio- or download-friendly average of around five minutes a piece. Those timings seem to be relaxed a little in concert (I wasn’t actually timing, but that was the impression), yet things are still kept tight and lean. Much of the abrasiveness that gave much of the material on “Sensible Shoes” a harsh edge has been planed away in order to highlight Holub’s ability to write tunes around catchy hooks. Those hooks, when married to Holub’s exuberant rhythmic drive, are nigh on irresistible, and should guarantee that Led Bib now satisfy a broad audience. It would be a shame, however, if those hooks were to obscure the depth and range of the new material, and the terrific group dynamic during these tight heads divert all attention from the subtler interactions at play. If I have one criticism of Led Bib’s tighter, more homogeneous sound, it is that there’s little space left in it for the more varied tones of some of their previous works, such as the sepia lyricism to be heard in the lovely but now distinctly atypical “Debts”, from 2005’s “Arboretum”. There’s still plenty going on here though, with Holub leading the group through frequently dramatic but always nicely transitioned stylistic switches, and there’s the occasional pan-cultural flavour (Latin on “Is that a Woodblock?”, Arabic on “Walnuts”) to add vivid splashes of colour.

The ?downtown’ New York sound popularised over the past quarter century by John Zorn and Tim Berne remains the closest point of reference for the Led Bib sound, but as the band gain in maturity (and they’ve been together for seven years now) that sound becomes ever more distinctive. Led Bib’s twinned alto saxophonists, Pete Grogan and Chris Williams, weave in and out of synchronization, selflessly laying out whenever clarity of line is wanted, at other times lacing together melodies that nicely overlay Holub’s rhythmic impetus. Toby McLaren coaxes shimmering ripples of harmonics from his Fender Rhodes, imbuing the music with vivid washes of timbral colour that invests it with a vitally immersive depth. McLaren has grown in either confidence or ability over the past few years, and it’s now his playing as much as anyone’s that distinguishes Led Bib from the competition. Liran Donin on mostly electric bass is a vital and fully engaged presence, bodily driving things forward without ever lapsing into jazz-rock cliché. The tracks from “Bring Your Own” are more than ever energized by Donin?s urgent muscularity. Tellingly, he laid down his electric bass for the double bass only twice, and each time provided an instant reminder that the snappy resonances of the acoustic instrument blend with the wood and skin of jazz drumming styles in ways the the electric instrument can’t begin to. It was a reminder that the band here are playing well within their range, focusing on the realisation of a specific body of work rather than working out their influences. This is a great time to catch Led Bib live.

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