By Brian Morton | Published May 2022
The titles, you’ll probably notice, reference John Williams’ ever-present title song to Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. The music doesn’t. The music is actually much more Chandleresque. It evokes sorrow and anger, lostness, edgy winds in off the mountains, the empty spaces between the stars, and how you navigate a place like Los Angeles and the dusty villages just over the border. That this is a brilliantly gifted group is evident from the players’ ability to just let events happen. There are witty Marlowesque interventions here and there, mostly from guitarist David Harrington, but mostly they don’t beat the script too hard or move the camera around too much.
Music that’s higher on atmospherics than narrative can sometimes pall, but not here. Producer Harrington says it’s an attempt to inhabit the “imagined Los Angeles of the mind: a place where the psychedelic can be both inspiring and sinister.” Remember that in the Altman movie, stoned girls do yoga just over the landing from where in Marlowe’s flat a girl’s face is smashed by a Coke bottle. The trio’s music is a little like that, except the violence is kept implicit and in check, which makes it all the more effective. In the end, it doesn’t need any kind of supporting program or agenda.
Ersahin’s reeling saxophone lines, Wollesen’s rock-fueled splash and crunch, Harrington’s gift for shimmer and ambiguity; put together, they make something very special that only works together and depends entirely on creative integrity.
Invite Your Eye: And It Happens Every Day; Dusty Village; Even As You Smile; Invite Your Eye; Wreck The Study; The Long Goodbye Part 1; What All The Books Say; The Long Goodbye Part 2. (40:21)
Personnel: Ilan Ersahin, saxophone, Wurlitzer electric piano, Juno 106, piano; Dave Harrington, guitar, electronics, bass, organ, Moog, mellotron, percussion, sampler; Kenny Wollesen, drums, vibraphone, percussion.
