(2020) Wood River - More Than I Can See
Review:
However much Charlotte Greve’s reputation as a jazz saxophonist precedes her, genre-related expectations should be set aside for her Wood River project and More Than I Can See, the quartet’s follow-up to its self-titled 2015 debut. Certainly traces of jazz are present in the interplay and the occasional improvised moment, but structures, melodies, and vocals bring rock and pop elements to the release also. By the Hamburg-born and NYC-based artist’s own admission, her interest lies in music that inhabits an in-between space that resists easy categorization. Joining Greve (credited with alto sax, voice, and synths) in the group are guitarist Keisuke Matsuno, electric bassist Simon Jermyn, and drummer Tommy Crane, making for a flexible unit capable of adapting to mutating sets of circumstances. At any moment, Wood River’s music segues from jazz-rock to art-pop and back again, the contours blurred between stylistic markers in the group’s execution. Greve’s the leader here—she’s credited as composer on six of its eight pieces—but as a musical entity Wood River’s clearly a band, not Greve and backup. In keeping with a group resistant to pigeon-holing, it’s not uncommon for a song to shape-shift multiple times, the tendency less reflecting an inability to focus so much as a group brimming with ideas and eager to pack as many of them into a piece as possible. A case in point, “See” advances from a ponderous, ballad-styled intro with Greve intoning monotonically into a lightly swinging bossa nova episode before moving on to a rousing exercise in melodic pop featuring a dreamy sax solo that feels like Greve channeling Andy Mackay—and all of it packed into a six-minute frame. Her saxophone is a lead element, naturally, (witness the multi-tracked solo in “The Procrastinator,” for instance) but as prominently featured on the collection are Matsuno’s guitar and her singing. The arresting blend of art-pop and prog-rock that drives “Future Fun” tickles the ear, even before the song takes a turn into something grungier. Greve’s smooth vocal heightens the song’s appeal, her voice soft yet still strong enough to be heard amidst the guitar-heavy clamour. Even better is “The Procrastinator” for the radiant vocal hook with which it begins and the Afobeat-meets-ska pulse that joins it. An instrumental by Crane, “Pete Vinegar Likes It Sweet” gets a strong boost from wordless vocalizing, the lilting rise-and-fall of its melodic line, and a slow climactic build that’ll leave you swooning. Jermyn’s “Hidden Word,” on the other hand, advances at a molasses-like pace that enables the band to methodically shape its elements—a soaring melody and anthemic rock solo from Matsuno among them—into an instrumental power ballad, if there is such a thing. On a lighter tip, the loping “Jammz” nudges the band into an instrumental hip-hop zone. There are moments here that call to mind bands as varied as Lush, Talking Heads, Television, and King Crimson (see the Fripp-toned guitar that introduces “Returners”), but the songs ultimately end up sounding like Wood River productions more than pastiches. It’ll be interesting to see where the group goes next.
Tracklist:
Media Report:
Genre: art pop, indie-rock, jazz
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
