The Thing

Bag It!

Smalltown Superjazz
Joe McPhee | Paal Nilssen-Love

Tomorrow Came Today

Smalltown Superjazz
The Thing is a serious proposition, one of the most exciting Jazz acts in Europe. They’ve always been good, but their last two albums confirm them as an act of real substance. They have a populist streak, which is always the first thing to be mentioned in reviews that usually have room for little else. The populist streak is, no doubt, a good thing. I first noticed the band when Garage came out (2004) with its covers of songs by Chuck Berry, The Sonics, White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But there was also a composition by Peter Brotzmann and an uncompromisingly free and powerful original statement, reminding us all of the groups’ roots as, effectively, a Don Cherry tribute band (they never sounded much like Cherry, but he penned the bulk of their early material). 

The influence of rock music first showed with the selection of a PJ Harvey tune to lead off their second album, She Knows, which was re-issued along with the first as part of the Now and Forever box-set last year. That box also includes a good illustration of the limits of the rockist direction with the inclusion of a live performance DVD of the band joined on stage by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, to underwhelming effect.  Maybe The Thing (collectively Mats Gustafson, Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, and Paal Nilssen-Love) felt the same, because after Garage this tendency was channeled into the spin-off project Two Bands and a Legend (the other band being the Cato Salsa Experience and the legend coming courtesy of Joe McPhee). This left The Thing free to realise Action Jazz (2006), which remains their best dose for Jazz lovers. The one ?rock’ cover on that album is from Lightning Bolt, bass/drums punk/metal instrumentalists whose frenetic music is close to crossing over in the other direction. Otherwise, Action Jazz is pretty much as advertised: imagine Last Exit paying tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis and you’ll perhaps get part of the picture. 
Bag It! expands on the Action Jazz template, drafting in alt. rock producer Steve Albini to keep things sonically raw-boned, and adding electronics to their noise arsenal. Proceedings kick off with covers by The Ex and Muzsikas (Dutch anarchism mets Hungarian tradition) and 54 Nude Honeys (under dressed (but not actually nude) Japanese female Punk ?n’ Rollers). Then there’s a sound-art composition by Swedish ?text-sound composer’ (thanks Wikipedia) ?ke Hodell. But the remaining compositions are half original, half Jazz (Ellington’s Mystery Song; Ayler’s Angels). Yet, as you may guess, it won’t be everyone’s idea of Jazz per se. The electronics on the Honeys’ Drop The Gun are brutal and obliterating; exhilarating too. The following title track sensibly offers total contrast with impressionistic kit-periphery percussion sounds providing an intro to an otherwise melodic and (whisper it) swinging track that nonetheless kicks up a considerable ruckus. Hodell’s Snusvisan is a showcase for Haaker Flaten’s muscular bass thrumming and The Thing in full collective flight. Electronics are deployed with real sensitivity in the early stages to source textural possibilities, and there they are again at the start of the original Hot Doug, laying down an atmosphere that seeps into the mood of the piece, producing something new albeit with an eye to tradition. Then there are the Ellington and Ayler to close. Mystery Song retains its core of sophisticated elegance even as it’s recast in the spirit of The Shape of Jazz to Come; Angels is poignant, deeply felt and achingly emotive even as those electronics begin to swirl around. On balance, here’s another terrific Thing album, in the bag.

For a much more restrained and evidently considered listening experience, a palate-cleanser after the Bag It! storm has blown itself out perhaps, the Tomorrow Came Today duo of Thing drummer Nilssen-Love and the Legend incarnate, saxophonist Joe McPhee, comes highly recommended. McPhee seems an odd choice for the Two Bands project, where he’s easy to overlook. Here he demonstrates why - at least, until he was adopted by the Smalltown Superjazz label as an in-house paterfamilias - he was overlooked everywhere except his native Chicago: he’s too bloody good for his own good. Nothing second-hand; nothing over-sold. Just saxophonic authority probing possibilities, in company with one of the finest Jazz drummers: period.

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