Jon Lloyd Quartet - Earth Songs

2024

Ask around, and you’ll likely hear that jazz lacks appeal because you can’t follow the tune, there are far too many notes, and everyone – even the bassist and drummer – takes interminable solos. And even if you love all that, you may have albums where you can understand how someone unsympathetic doesn’t feel invited in to the music.

Fortunately, such wariness neglects the fact that jazz is all-embracing, and here’s a near-perfect example of a recording that is intently focussed on the qualities some assume are lacking. It offers straightforwardly memorable tunes: caressed, never bullied with technique. Each contributes to a mood of patient exploration as beguiling as it is beautiful.

Saxophonist and composer Jon Lloyd speaks of his developing interest in a “European” sound and, recently, the ECM aesthetic. The deceptive simplicity that sometimes offers might lead to unsatisfying results in the wrong hands, but here inspires a set which channels deep feeling with considerable power.

There is technical prowess aplenty on hand. The new quartet sees Lloyd renewing his partnership with one of our finest pianists, John Law. Like the saxophonist – who played in the 1980s with the likes of Evan Parker and John Butcher and had a quartet in the ‘90s with Law, Mark Sanders and Paul Rogers – Law explored free music extensively before returning to an emphasis on more conventional expression. His experience, ranging over a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a recent duo with Lloyd playing renaissance music as well as numerous groups of his own, means he can now play anything. Here, he shares with Lloyd a quality once identified in the saxophonist’s playing by Brian Morton and Richard Cook, “commanding the sound with patient authority”.

Their mutual sympathy is evident from the opener, Al’Afiyah, where a single repeated piano note sets the tempo for Nick Pini and Alex Goodyear on bass and drums before the Lloyd declares the theme, and Law launches a richly embroidered solo that gives way to simpler sax phrases growing out of the nourishing prompts of the rhythm section. There follows Breaking the Waves, the longest cut, where Lloyd’s playing again has a slightly Nordic flavour (more Tore Brunborg than Garbarek). Here, as on much of the album, Goodyear is a model of subtlety, doing just enough on brushes to keep things ticking along nicely. Law’s classically-informed touch again offers an ideal foil for the leader’s ruminations, and another pellucid solo.

And so the CD unfolds, with nicely judged variations in sound and pace. Lloyd’s agile soprano comes into the mix on several tracks, where he tends toward more complex lines and closer dialogue with the piano. Nick Pini grounds the sound with perfect time and tone, and does offer a couple of brief solos. There are moments approaching closer to ferocity. Desert Song has a clamorous piano excursion and a duet for tenor sax and drums that will have anyone settling back for a gentler listen back on the edge of their seat. The Trip is a perky collective improvisation that takes on a strong flavour of Andy Sheppard’s later quartets and trios.

But the overall mood hews closer to stately tempos and a slowly unrolling carpet of music, not a sound torrent. The closer, The Heron, is appropriately pastoral and has perhaps the slowest beat count of all. But that indicates no lack of energy: playing at these drifting tempos calls for a confidence in the concept of the group and their sound that shines through the entire album. I’ve heard the quartet live a couple of times now, and the same is true of their gigs. It’ll be a pleasure to catch them again when they go on the road to promote this fine recording.

Jon Turney