By Michael J. West | Published October 2025
Love Letters is JD Allen’s attempt at creating something new by applying an old idea. The tenor saxophonist augments his chordless trio with bassist Ian Kenselaar and drummer Nic Cacioppo by adding a special-guest fourth (as he does on nearly every album), this time pianist Brandon McCune, in pursuit of eight tried-and-true ballad standards. This is unfamiliar territory for Allen, who usually spelunks his own originals — and, more recently, has dived into more experimental textures as well.
Promoted as “a stripped-down take,” it isn’t really such: McCune’s piano is uncommonly plush and billowy, seeming to take up more harmonic space than it really does. Hence even his light comps behind Allen, as on “I Get Along Without You Very Well” or “My Buddy,” fill up the corners of one’s ears like fog from a machine. That’s to say nothing of his solos. The one on opener “You Are Too Beautiful,” for instance, is so full and lush that it even widens the sound of Cacioppo’s brushes and adds meat to Kenselaar’s lean bass tone. It does the same thing to Allen; on “Where Are You,” we can hear his sleek sax sound widen and open like yeast to meet McCune where he’s at.
Yet Allen still remains Allen, his sax remains sleek and incisive. On “My Buddy,” he wields it like a switchblade, lunging in for slicing underhand attacks and quick, precise movements. If it gains a certain softness around the edges of “Stardust,” it retains a Hemingway-esque approach to phrasing: get in, get it said, get out. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, putting Allen in this balladeering torch-song context doesn’t change him; it makes him more the same than ever.
