The Messthetics And James Brandon Lewis
Schedule
Fri Sep 06 2024 at 07:30 pm
UTC-07:00Location
104 N. Ave 56, Los Angeles, CA, United States, California 90042 | Los Angeles, CA
Joe Lally was onstage, playing at full throttle, when he realized that his band had found a truekindred spirit. It was the fall of 2021 and the Messthetics—the instrumental trio of Lally onbass, his former Fugazi bandmate Brendan Canty on drums and guitarist Anthony Pirog—were at Brooklyn venue the Bell House, digging into their uptempo riff workout “SerpentTongue.” Joining them for the piece was a special guest, acclaimed jazz saxophonist JamesBrandon Lewis, making only his second cameo with the group after a drop-in at another NewYork show back in 2019. That first meeting had been a success, but this time, Lewis’ presencesparked something new.“It pushed the song like crazy,” Lally recalls of a passage when Lewis and Pirog began tradingfiery solos. As the intensity kept building, the bassist felt simultaneously challenged andexhilarated. “You’re just holding on and going, ‘It sounds great,’” he remembers telling himself.“‘Just keep going.’”That imperative—the sense that there was more toexplore within what began as an ad hocunion among the four musicians—lingered after the performance ended. Now, Lewis, Pirog,Lally and Canty are ready to unveil their first full-length album as a quartet. Recorded in just twodays in December 2022 at Takoma Park, Maryland, studio Tonal Park, with engineer DonGodwin,The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewisfeatures nine tracks that capture thecombustive chemistry Lally originally sensed onstage while expanding the collaboration in alldirections. Across the album, due out on March 15th via the legendary Impulse! label, thequartet can be heard locking into a hard, swaggering funk groove on “That Thang,” cradling awistful, jazz-like theme on “Asthenia” or rocketing into ecstatic art-punk overdrive on“Emergence.”Canty relishes the way the album preserves a feeling of real-time musical conversation. “In aworld that can be perfected in a myriad of ways using computers, it’s super important to allowthe thing you’ve honestly reacted to, to live,” the drummer says. “So I’ve spent a lot of time,since that first initial recording, protecting this recording. We did try to mix some of it, but wereally left it as rough mixes for the most part.”“Sometimes you’ll play a record live and it just doesn’t translate like it does onstage,” Pirogadds. “But this was just one of those moments where we were just prepared enough, everyonewas open to being loose enough, that we just sat down and made it happen really fast.”Evidence of that spontaneity runs throughoutthe record. Listen to the way Canty and Lewis playa tumbling, stop-start duet against Pirog and Lally’s tight descending vamp at the end ofopening track “L’Orso” or how Lewis and Pirog improvise together atop a dubby groove during“Three Sisters,” urgingone another toward thrilling new peaks.Even when the guitarist and saxophonist solo sequentially, as on closing track “Fourth Wall”—where Lewis ends his statement with a gritty wail and Pirog answers with a snarling, soulful line—you can hear a certain charge passing between them“The duality of them playing together—all these melody lines and then egging each other onduring the solos—was super liberating,” Canty says of Pirog and Lewis’ interplay. “And for meas a drummer, I felt like I could literally just be a utility player, just to support.”Though the configuration heard onThe Messthetics and James Brandon Lewisis relatively new,it builds on long-standing musical relationships. Lewis and Pirog first met around a decade agoat a session led by free-jazz drummer William Hooker and instantly hit it off, going on to worktogether extensively in Lewis’ own groups. “Since day one of knowing Anthony, me and him justfit,” says Lewis, now widely acclaimed as one of the most compelling bandleaders on thecontemporary jazz scene. “We looked at each other after that William Hooker session, and wewas like, ‘Damn, this shit is on point.’”Lally and Canty of course share a similar brotherhood, rooted in the 15 years they spent touringthe worldas the supple yet rock-solid rhythm section for Washington, D.C.’s iconic Fugazi. “Iplay differently with Joe than I play with anybody else,” Canty says. “He creates this foundationthat I call a very sturdy jungle gym for all of us to play on. He keeps it dubby and rhythmic, andthere’s a lot of times where there’s a sixth sense—there’s things that happen between us whenwe’re playing that there’s no accounting for except for the fact that we’ve been playing togetherfor 30 years.”Lewis likens the experience of playing with Lally and Canty to his work with various jazz elders.“The way I revere them is the same way that I revere playing with Jamaaladeen Tacuma orplaying with William Parker,” he says, citing a pair of esteemed veteran bassists. “It’s acertainroad experience that you can’t get in school.” He also appreciates that he can hear the richmusical heritage of their hometown in their sound. “Growing up in the D.C. area, Brendan andJoe are familiar with go-go, with all of the stuff from the area,” he says. “So I will say that thetime feel—it don’t get no better than that. It’s like a well-oiled machine playing with them.”That steady rhythmic backbone, coupled with Pirog’s omnivorous guitar approach—whichdraws on jazz, punk, free improvisation and everything in between—gave the Messthetics ahuge sonic palette right from the start, showcased on both their self-titled 2018 debut and2019’sAnthropocosmic Nest. But Pirog had always been curious what his friend Lewis mightadd to the band, leading to him extending the invite for the saxophonist’s initial 2019 sit-in,which took place at New York’s Winter Jazzfest.“James was just someone who I felt had the right energy to add another texture to the group,and immediately we already had agood interplay going from playing in his groups,” Pirog says.“I also just wanted to share this group that I’ve been working with, with him because he was sogenerous with me.”Once the quartet established a rapport onstage, the Messthetics followed up with an invitation toteam up for an album, which Lewis quickly accepted.Every time I played with them, there was a vibe and it was a good chemistry,” Lewis says,looking back on his early appearances with the group, which eventually led to a one-off studiotrack that appeared on the saxophonist’s 2023 LPEye of I. “They hit me up and they’re like, ‘Yo,man, would you want to record a full record?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ because the vibe wasso natural.”The Messthetics spent a few months in the fall of 2022 assembling and arranging material as atrio before meeting with Lewis for just one day of rehearsal prior to the recording in December.Even with minimal prep time, the material evolved considerably. Lewis added a lush, spiralingmelody to the chorus section of “The Time Is the Place,” originally called “Meters Groove” inhonor of the song’s Canty-written central riff, a crisp seven-beat strut. And Lewis was the keyelement that unlocked Lally’s “Railroad Tracks Home,” joining the bassist on the second passthrough the theme and turning the subtle, swinging mood piece from something, in Lally’swords, “dirge-y and dark” to “a light-bringing thing.”The seven-and-a-half-minute “Boatly,” meanwhile, maderoom for each member of the band toexplore his full dynamic range, with brushed drums and a ballad-like texture segueing into abreathtaking coda—which Pirog cites as his favorite moment on the album—where Lewisunleashes fierce cries and brawny blasts over a cyclical 6/8 theme as Canty works up to acymbal-bashing climax.The fervor of Lewis’ playing both here and elsewhere on the record clearly points back to JohnColtrane and Pharoah Sanders, firmly rooting the album in the soil of the classic Impulse!catalog, despite its thoroughly contemporary feel. Lally says he can’t wait to see his band’sname next to the unmistakable orange, white and black Impulse! logo. “Looking at a record andI’m on impulse! with Alice Coltrane?” he adds with giddy disbelief. “It’s like being on OtisRedding’s label.”“I’m trying to be cool about it,” Canty says with a laugh of being associated with such a storiedcatalog. “Hopefully nobody’s going to figure out that I’m the imposter in the temple.”Thankfully, it’s hardto imagine today’s listeners thinking in those restrictive terms, as the albumis arriving at a time when the borders of genre are blurrier than ever. Lewis, for one, relishes thechance to plug into the power of the Messthetics’ punk-adjacent milieu. “Ithink that’s ultimatelywhy I said yes” to pursuing the full-length, he says. “I love nuanced stuff, but I also like theability to really just put out some energy. When you hear the Messthetics by themselves, thatshit is cranking. And I’m always signingup to crank.”Judging by the enthusiastic response the Messthetics and their esteemed guest have receivedduring more recent live meetings, listeners are similarly eager to hear what happens whenbrilliant players like these stretch themselves through collaboration.“I feel like, more and more, there’s an audience for exploration,” Canty says. “And I really hopethis record’s part of that.”
Where is it happening?
104 N. Ave 56, Los Angeles, CA, United States, California 90042
