First glances at the album cover, and indeed many of Halvorson’s album covers, suggest that there is something “sweet” or “comforting” about this music (purchasing a physical cd of this release even comes with an embossed glossy ribbon). These tactics seem slightly deceptive, or at least oddly humorous. No, what lies inside is nearly an hour of thrashing, disorienting, and extremely thrilling jazz compositions for her 8-piece band – indeed, the sound on a Mary Halvorson project may have never been so enormous.
“The Absolute Almost” is the longest track, and it features a wide range of the arrangement ideas and sounds you’ll find on this album. Susan Alcorn begins the piece with a lap steel guitar solo that is paced slowly and extremely hollow. And then comes Halvorson with feverish single note slide guitar lines that just barely fill out the harmony, implying odd chords and tonalities. This section is very dissonant and tortured sounding – ugly, yet warm sounds – and it seems to just get thicker and thicker when the upright bass joins in. But then, we’re presented with a strikingly new idea – a break where brass enters in an incredible and triumphant shift of moods. Suddenly everything feels bright and the harmony turns – sort of sweet. This idea is played with and then ultimately destroyed as the band falls into a sonic free for all.
In the jazz world, seemingly more than any other genre, it seems there is this conflict between “tradition” and “experimentation”. I will not claim to be an expert on that tradition or even the tradition of experimentation, but I know for a fact that this is an ongoing discussion. Some argue jazz should remain that straight-ahead, urban sound (a sound like: Jim Hall or Wes Montgomery) while others look to the future and ask where jazz might be headed and how it could be combined with other styles. Halvorson certainly borrows and is inspired by those traditions but plants herself, in my mind, very far on the side that welcomes experimentation and a more eclectic sense of melody. The compositions on this album are very complex and lengthy and they’re densely filled with detailed brass arrangements, killer, off-kilter guitar playing, tasteful, demanding drumming and an overall desire for tumult and chaos. “Away With You” finds the Mary Halvorson Octet moving jazz forward in strange, mathematic intervals and producing horrifying acoustic sounds that you wouldn’t believe could be so strangely, and perhaps sweetly, musical.