Search - Liberation Prophecy :: Last Exit Angel

Eclectic, eccentric jazz

Larry Sakin | Tucson, AZ | 09/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Music publicists tend to extrapolate when they characterize a band for critics. The press release that came with this album described the band as a "genre-confounding nine piece band from Louisville with influences as diverse as Sun Ra, Coltrane to Frank Zappa." Now come on--what old-fart music professional like me wouldn't be intrigued by such a description?



Surprisingly, the press release for the new Liberation Prophecy album Last Exit Angel is pretty on target about the band, which does borrow heavily from avant-garde jazz, the Mothers of Invention and mixes it with a little free-spirited R&B. And the results are more than gratifying.



Liberation Prophecy is probably best known as the group where multi-Grammy winner Norah Jones had her humble beginnings. On Last Exit Angel, Jones enthusiastically contributes an extraordinary bit of soulful balladry on the albums third track "Lonely Lament". The rest of the album swings wildly with horn sections that sound like they're following arrangements from a tipsy Ornette Coleman on "Armed Ant War" to a Latin-oriented sound a la Tito Puente cast against a carnival backdrop in the instrumental bridge in "Passage" to wondrously beatific vocal wizardry provided by Amber Estes on "Strange New Figurine", "Dreams" and the title track, with a spoken word intro provided by Jacob Duncan doing a great Zappa impression. It's all gloriously mad-- a number of hits of musical acid immediately followed by sips of a fine, rare wine.



The patient leading this asylum is Jacob Duncan, playing alto sax, flute, clarinet, and toy piano. Duncan's arrangements are playfully tongue-in-cheek at times but when he gets serious, there some extremely intense work to be found here. The horn section is completed by tenor saxman Aaron Kinman, Chris Fortner's trombone, and Josh Toppass on baritone sax. They are supported ably by the rhythm provided by Jason Tiemann on drums and percussion, Todd Hildreth's piano, Hammond B-3 and occasional accordion work, Sonny Stephens on double bass and electric bass and Craig Wagner's guitars. They all make this complex blend of styles sound easy to pull off. That the album works so well is a tribute to their musical chops.



Last Exit Angel accomplishes what few albums can anymore. It actually lives up to the distorted representations of the bands publicists and goes far beyond their effusive treatment. The album both entices and enchants, and even makes a cranky critic like me believe in the magic of original music again.



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