#myriad3

Fresh Listen - Myriad3, Moons (ALMA Records, 2016)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not so recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

Jazz is the exemplary American art form, because the essential nature of jazz music is freedom. The freedom to knock down the door to the house of song and the space to run around the yard, into the next property, perhaps to return the house with a set of outrageous paints and a bulldozer to demolish it. Preconceived melodies, structures, and chords may motivate, but not necessarily determine, the outspeaks of jazz’s sometimes ruthless improvisations, for these constructs are simply a convenient means by which to simultaneously dissect and project a less tangible–ultimately aspirational–harmonic expression. In other words, the value of listening to jazz music is not absorbed by hearing a band slavishly conform to a prescribed piece of music; rather, the value of listening to jazz comes from exposure to the repeated possibilities of transcendence jazz encourages, when the understood is subverted by a more beautiful mystery.

By this description, Myriad3, three musicians (Ernesto Cervini, Chris Donnelly, and Dan Fortin) playing together as a traditional jazz combo–piano, bass, and drums–play jazz-seeming songs that aren’t actually jazz. Instead of imparting spontaneous explorations through their carefully constructed pieces, they are scrupulous purveyors of each predetermined note, inhabiting their compositions in a spirit more Booker T. and the MG’s than John Coltrane Quartet. Instead of solos on their latest record, there are riffs. Instead of the fear of chaos there is the comfort of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Moons, released in 2016, is a collection of instrumentals both earthy and sentimental, exuberant and reflective. Each musician aligns his expression to the insistence of repetition and logic, the backbone of popular song.

An ominous, chunky, two-note alarm resounds from the deep end the piano on the intro to “Skeleton Key,” a track that interweaves a heavy beat and grounded chord progression with an almost weightless manifestation of Duke Ellington’s version of “dreaming,” all of it progressively energized by the ambient ring of noise whirling behind the three musicians. All around, the playing is muscular and driving, the drums working a pocket beat of rock’n’roll while the bass references the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today),” in a cresting buildup worthy of the classic pop songbook. While “Skeleton Key,” straightforward as it is, is still perhaps too sophisticated to ever gain tractions as a radio hit, its firm melody line would make for an effective opening sequence to a premium cable television drama.

Though the band eschews on-the-spot improvisation, Myriad3 does embrace some of the characteristics of what is expected of jazz: complex time signatures, surprising chords. The material from Moons challenges the band more than any one of the players pushing the other, and “Noyammass” comes across like an exercise in trad jazz playing, but without the tension created by the necessary likelihood that the whole works could spin out of control. Nonetheless, Ernesto, Chris, and Dan equip themselves admirably in “Noyammas,” and the originality of the songwriting hints at the aforementioned freedom, bright and blue, that can be seen just outside the window of their sound.

“Unnamed Cells” also begins with a two-chord pattern, though less pressing than the single notes that opens “Skelton Key.” From mild beginnings, “Unnamed Cells” blooms quickly into a soul-funk backbeat, the pianist pushing echoing keys to fill pockets left open by the percussion. Eventually, the contest between drummer and piano player becomes a test of endurance, as the keyboardist races to build blocks of single notes between each strike of the hi-hat and the snare.

The band holds the dynamism of the first three songs in check on “Stoner,” a mostly depressive track that plays how it sounds–meandering, introspective, unsure of what it’s grappling with from the inside, trapped to the never-ending chain of paranoias until, at almost random moments, a bolt of inspiration lands, a little bubble of joy pops and dissipates and the band catches the listener by surprise with a quick Radiohead-esque lick (”Hunting Bears Is Wrong” comes to mind).

The ballads continue into “Peak Fall,” a thoughtful workout that evokes a drive through the waning brilliance of an autumnal countryside. Except the band chooses to portray the feeling with wonder instead of the generally accepted melancholy. The bass takes a turn as the center for a brief spell, calling out the deeper, earthy powers of the seasons to drive true change. Myriad3 returns to spirited form in “Counter of the Cumulus,” calling to mind none other than Led Zeppelin with its slightly twisted riffage and the explosions of its bass and drums in a unified front to electrify the senses, echoing the call-to-arms intro of “Communication Breakdown.” “Ameliasburg,” a relaxed number reminiscent of Satie’s “Gymnopedies,” steps along with a nearly-buried Western swing bounce in waltz time. “Sketch 8″ is exactly what it’s title proposes, exciting in that the band’s playing seems less structured, the song itself perhaps the result of a concentrated jam session.