Search - Joe Locke :: Dear Life

Wonderfully evocative

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 10/30/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Joe Locke, long a leading vibes player of his generation, with his last two discs (this one and 4 Walls of Freedom) has become one of the top bandleaders and songwriters on the jazz scene today. Returning with one half of the original 4 Walls of Freedom band (himself and drummer Gary Novak) and adding two new players (bassist Ed Howard replacing James Genus and Tommy Smith coming on board after the passing of Bob Berg), this new group is even stronger than the previous one. Locke and Novak have an uncanny rhythmic sense and Smith, the great but somewhat unsung Scottish tenor sax player, brings a wonderful Celtic folk-jazz sensibility to the proceedings which perfectly fits the vibe.



Indeed, this is another in a long line of simply fabulous world jazz offerings of the past two years. The folk music here comes not from Hispanic culture, as it so often does, but from the British Isles and Appalachia. These musics, culturally and geographically disparate as they may be, nevertheless share a similar deep feeling--one of melancholic joy, that is, sadness shot through with flashes of glory. Call it elegiac, euchatastrophic, whatever; it most accurately captures the truth of the human situation--one in which although we are made in the image of God, we are marred by imperfection, loss, and faded glory. But that, thankfully, is not the end of the story. Grace perfects nature, and though we can never live up to our high calling, there is One who has by his life, passion, death, and resurrection, and who gives His life to us if we are willing to receive it.



That is what I mean by euchatastrophy (a word coined by J.R.R. Tolkien), and that is what shines through this marvelous music, most gloriously and transparently in "Wind in the Willow," at just over 11 minutes the longest number on the album, and the title cut, the second longest number, but, really, all throughout the entire disc. There's also a deep mysteriousness pervading these proceedings, almost a kind of legerdemainic alchemy, although of a Christian not occult type (if that is possible)--the white magic that C.S. Lewis references in his space trilogy, not the black magic of paganism.



As if you can't tell, I'm completely blown away by this mesmeric music, some of the finest ever produced in a genre that is perhaps my very favorite. If any proof were needed of the greatness of this music, one need only listen to the achingly beautiful last track, "Verrazano Moon," with its Danny Boyish vibe, its pure elegiacism, its deep longing, its heavenly gloriousness.



Pure magic."