By Michelle Mercer | Published January 2018
As on previous albums, Paint features bassist Moppa Elliott’s original compositions named for Pennsylvania towns that conjure horse and fracking country. The difference here is that MOPDTK scales down to a piano trio, jazz’s hallowed high-art setting.
MOPDTK’s droll re-creation of the famous Money Jungle session photo for Paint signals irreverence, but the album’s music is more than ironic toying with sacred cows. Elliott, pianist Ron Stabinsky and drummer Kevin Shea play carefully orchestrated tunes centered on a fault line between traditional styles and free improvisation, juxtaposing dissimilar elements to create little earthquakes in the listening experience. On “Yellow House,” we’re only a few bars into a jovial strut when Shea’s drums begin a quiet riot against the prevailing mood. Such stylistic contradictions shake open new meanings over seven Elliott originals and one Ellington cover, “Blue Goose.” There’s no place for nostalgia in the trio’s mash-ups—on “Green Briar,” for example, we’re too busy managing the turn from brisk bebop to what sounds like Don Pullen deconstructing McCoy Tyner’s solo on “My Favorite Things.”
Still, this juxtaposition game is high-risk. On “Golden Hill,” Shea’s polyrhythmic outbursts work like air pockets lurching the lilting waltz off its otherwise pleasant flight path. But unsettling our complacency forces us into the present moment, and that’s the point: Even when I don’t exactly like MOPDTK’s musical choices, I stay woke as a listener, and I like that. We’ll never drift into a dream of past jazz glories with this band, which is intent on making listening as dynamic as the music we admire.
Paint: Yellow House; Orangeville; Black Horse; Blue Goose; Plum Run; Green Briar; Golden Hill; Whitehall. (46:40)
Personnel: Ron Stabinsky, piano; Moppa Elliott, bass; Kevin Shea, drums.
