The Thing - Action Jazz (Smalltown Superjazz)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Throughout this review, there will be noises. Because throughout this album, there are noises. Noises that sound like this...
HONK!!!
There have always been jazz takes on rock standards. Jazz trios consisting of a drummer, a bassist and a saxophonist, are also nothing new. But that's about as far as comparisons between the jazz played by The Thing and, well, any other kind of music come to a conclusive end.
I guess it depends on who your friends are. SHRONG!!! Unless you're a freeform jazz expert (and trust me, I ain't), the most well known name in The Thing (The Thing itself being a great name for a band) will be saxophonist Mats Gustaffson, who has played with the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Eye from Boredoms and Sonic Youth. He's a man pretty entrenched in the underground / experimental / alternative / whatever rock scene. So when he picks what songs his jazz trio cover, he draws from these influences, these friendships. KRUNNNGG!!! And ladies and gentlemen, what that leads to is Lightning Bolt's 'Ride The Skies' recreated on the bloody saxophone.
That particular interpretation goes so well that you kinda wish The Thing would attempt an entire album of Lightning Bolt classics, but the Rhode Island duo aren't the only avant garde rockers whose work is reinterpreted here - BWHAAA!!! - radically different, radically brilliant versions of the Cato Salsa Experience's 'Sounds Like A Sandwich', Ornette Coleman's 'Broken Shadows' and Yosuke Yamashita's 'Chiasma' also appear, amongst other disparate delights.
But The Thing are not mere imitators. PWEEEE!!! No, such a term not only does a disservice to the startling new versions of these songs that appear on 'Action Jazz' (the most fitting title available) - really, they're covers in the same way that Hendrix's 'All Along The Watchtower' or The Clash doing 'I Fought The Law' are covers, meaning they completely make these songs their own - but The Thing also add their own compositional flair and musical mayhem to proceedings, taking on their helmsman Gustaffson's tensely sparse 'Strayhorn' (a title which perhaps describes his own brilliantly haphazard sax playing) and presenting their own manic fumblings in the shape of 'Better Living' and the penultimate freeform behemoth '...Through The BBQ'.
It might be because they're so adept at it, it might be because they're playing skewed rock songs, it's probably got something to do with the unrelenting pace and wide eyed wonder at sound itself that The Thing seem to possess and display within every track, but 'Action Jazz' is one heck of a lot of fun.
FURRRRGG!!!
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