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Branford Marsalis: Four MFs Playing Tunes

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Marsalis Music
Released: 2012.08.07
Time:
 66:59
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): Branford Marsalis
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.branfordmarsalis.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] The Mighty Sword (Branford Marsalis) - 7:07
[2] Brews (Branford Marsalis) - 5:12
[3] Maestra (Branford Marsalis) - 5:40
[4] Teo (Thelonious Monk) - 8:28
[5] Whiplash (Branford Marsalis) - 7:31
[6] As Summer into Autumn Slips (Branford Marsalis) - 9:51
[7] Endymion (Branford Marsalis) - 9:17
[8] My Ideal (Newell Chase / Leo Robin / Richard A. Whiting) - 9:35
[9] Treat It Gentle (Branford Marsalis) - 4:18

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Branford Marsalis - Saxophone, Producer
Joey Calderazzo - Piano
Eric Revis - Bass
Justin Faulkner - Drums

Rob "Wacko" Hunter - Engineer, Mixing
Greg Calbi - Mastering
Steve Fallone - Mastering Assistant
Steven Jurgensmeyer - Art Direction, Design
Eric Ryan Anderson - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


There was no doubt that when Jeff "Tain" Watts left the Branford Marsalis Quartet in 2009, they would take some time to regroup. They recruited then 18-year-old drummer Justin Faulkner, confusing many fans. But Marsalis knew what he was doing. Faulkner makes his BMQ debut on the no-nonsense Four MFs Playin' Tunes. The program features seven originals and two covers, recorded over a couple of days in 2011. There isn't any conceptual bent to what's here; the definition is in the humorous title -- four jazzmen investing themselves fully in a set of diverse compositions, focusing on the details of collective conversation, interplay, harmony, and improvisation. Faulkner has a fine balance of skills: he's physical, he possesses a forcefulness that drives this group, but he can also dance with real finesse. Joey Calderazzo's sprightly "The Mighty Sword," which has a slightly tropical Latin tinge, features excellent dialogue between Marsalis' soprano and the pianist in the high register. Faulkner pushes from the outside with frenetic snare, cymbal, and tom-tom work as bassist Eric Revis swings like mad underneath. Another highlight is the bassist's nearly mystical ballad "Maestra," which moves from speculative to an outright flow of elegance and emotion without ever losing its restraint. The cover of Monk's "Teo" is more about rhythmic dialogue than anything else. There is little harmonic revelation here, but the joy the group displays in playing its changes and the slippery series of extra and syncopated beats Faulkner slides in make it delightful. Marsalis' "Whiplash" is exactly what it claims to be: a driving, knotty hard bop tune with excellent tenor, piano, and drum solos. There's also a longer reprise of Calderazzo's "Endymion" from his and Marsalis' 2011 duet album, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy. With labyrinthine lyric exchanges by the pianist and Marsalis' tenor, the rhythm section -- in a dazzling intricate display of its own -- moves it beyond its classical leanings and into more adventurous terrain. Revis' bass here is so illustrative that Calderazzo could have gone off in any direction from the wide-angled melody. The saxophonist's "Treat It Gentle" is given gorgeous, straight-ahead blues ballad treatment with tasteful, lightly swinging solos; it stretches to over nine minutes. Four MFs Playin' Tunes is a solid return by the BMQ. Rather than offer anything new, they instead focus on re-introducing the band as a creative unit whose capacity for musical excellence is undiminished.

Thom Jurek - All Music Guide



It's often observed that this fine saxophonist's studio recordings rarely catch his live-show fire. There's a relaxation about this one, however (Branford Marsalis suggested the title to his manager as a joke, but it reflects the unselfconscious mood) that comes very close. Original drum star Jeff "Tain" Watts has been replaced by the lighter-stepping Justin Faulkner, but the other MFs – pianist Joey Calderazzo and bassist Eric Revis – supply Marsalis the same rocket-fuel they have since the late 1990s. There are fewer quirky set-pieces and more of a jam-like atmosphere, though Marsalis the balladeer is still eloquently present - in the flute-like soprano-sax delivery of As Summer Into Autumn Slips, or the tender tenor-sax robustness of My Ideal.But the ecstatically uptempo soprano-sax vehicle The Mighty Sword , the dazzling Whiplash (with its long trio spot just for the leader on languidly expressive tenor, pulled and nudged by bass and drums) and wryly stalking rhythm games like the blues-swinging Brews and the Monkish Teo really give this set its special spark.

John Fordham, 2 August 2012
© 2015 Guardian News and Media



Now, pardon my French, but there’s actually something really amusing about the word “motherfucker”. It gives us more than cheeky teenage kicks. It tends to hit the mark regardless of its grammatical context. The more aggressive end of the hip-hop spectrum uses it as a grunted adjective. When Prince used it, it was lascivious and raunchy. And, before all that, it was used by George Clinton in a more tame formation – the playfully psychedelic euphemism that was the word “motherfunker”. For Branford Marsalis, however, it seems to be a term of endearment for his quartet (pianist Joey Calderazzo, Eric Revis on bass, and new boy Justin Faulkner on drums). But while this sounds rather sweet, one might also say that Marsalis was trying a teeny tiny bit too hard to sound controversial. After all, this quartet is a uncontroversial set-up playing rather conventional jazz in a post-bop vain, so doesn’t it seem a bit, well, laboured? Perhaps it would have been better to call it Four Bookish Jazz Guys Wearin’ Jumpers, or Four Cool Jazz Dads Drivin’ Safely, or something. Yeah, that’s what we’ll call it.

Without accounting for his celebrity play dates with Sting, Four Dutiful Husbands Buyin’ Groceries is Branford Marsalis’s 24th album. It consists of seven looping original pieces of pretty bog-standard post-bop and two covers (Monk’s “Teo” and Robin, Chase, and Whiting’s “My Ideal”). And by “bog-standard”, I mean that it gets stuck in its own stinky, self-indulgent funk. It’s the same old studious conservatism that we know and loathe—it stands its ground and doesn’t look outside of the sadly deforested jazz jungle for inspiration. Indeed, on Four Young Lions Roarin’ Meekly, Branford Marsalis makes absolutely no attempt to rethink – let alone move beyond – the great innovators of the jazz world post-bebop. Make no mistake, it’s not a bad record by any means, and the Quartet are all good individual musicians. But when they play together, there just isn’t any fire. Nothing interesting happens.

Now, we can’t blame Marsalis or the other three-quarters of the quartet for the troubles of the jazz end of the music industry. Dwindling audiences since the 1980s and the collapse of record-buying have forced labels and artists into making some poor choices. But, here, Marsalis commits two of the numerous sins of contemporary jazz. First, this record is too long. At nine tracks and more than 66 minutes, it seems overloaded, like it wants to baffle you with its numerous, but ultimately quite empty, ideas. Second, the quantity-over-quality policy means that Marsalis opts to show off those ideas in a way that sacrifices any authentic exploration of themes or moods. This basically reduces the Quartet to being a jam band. They end up just being four guys. In a studio. Playing tunes. And somehow we’re supposed to swallow all their twists and turns and suave use of apostrophes as if they’re a sort of high-minded musical dialogue.

There are some shrewd exotic touches on opener “The Mighty Sword”. The interplay between Marsalis and Calderazzo, who spends the entire track tizzying over the high-notes, is really joyful, while bass and drums provide us with a shuffling, swinging backbone. But didn’t we already hear that on Sonny Rollins’s take on “St Thomas”? It doesn’t bring much more to the table. Both “Whiplash” and “Endymion” take some frenetic twists and turns. On the former, Marsalis dictates a shifting mood – tentative, kinda worrying, to a shuddering sprained drum solo conclusion. On the latter, we start off with a strange, soulful introduction, with Marsalis and Calderazzo playing an off-centre melody that quickly turns into something rather rattling and confusing. Revis gets his say about half way through, and it all comes crashing down at the end.

Basically, Four Vacationing Grad Students Wearin’ Fannypacks, in the swooning melancholia of “As Summer Into Autumn Slips”, and on the first half of “Maestra”, we get some good old fashioned contemplative ballads thrown in for good measure. However, there’s not very much to set anything on here apart from everything else that’s just like it that you’ve probably heard before. It’s not that it’s bland or boring, it’s just that the same sort of musicians have been putting out the same sort of records for the best part of 20 years. Where some of their peers have explored the stranger outreaches of afro-tech-jazz, or shown us just how darned dialectically integrated jazz and hip-hop are, Branford Marsalis and his crew have firmly entrenched themselves in a past long gone. And on this evidence, they ain’t budging.

Max Feldman, 28 August 2012
© 1999-2015 PopMatters.com



Branford Marsalis is onto something here. In press notes, he explains, “We need to quit thinking of songs as vehicles and think of them as songs. ... What we are trying to do is figure out the emotional purpose of each song ... and then play according to that purpose.” Marsalis’ bands have always had chops to burn. Few ensembles have used songs as “vehicles” with more outrageous technical prowess. But often, in concert and on record, they paraded virtuosity at the expense of pacing. Art Blakey’s one-word description of jazz was “intensity.” Sometimes Marsalis believed it too much.

The new album is different because it contains more focused, unified development of specific song forms. There is still rarefied blowing by Marsalis on tenor and soprano saxophones and Joey Calderazzo on piano. But discipline creates a new musicality. The band members compose strong, varied tunes. When Calderazzo and Marsalis (on soprano) spill ecstatic solos on Calderazzo’s “The Mighty Sword,” they sound like they are always thinking of the song. “Brews,” by bassist Eric Revis, is an odd, teetering, tumbling exercise to which the band stays true. Calderazzo’s “As Summer Into Autumn Slips” is a long arc of luminous impressionism, carefully, patiently traced.

The two standards are surprising choices with concepts. “Teo” is rarely heard Monk. The piano solo is the Calderazzo style and the Monk style whipped up in a blender. Marsalis, channeling Charlie Rouse, chews off and spits tenor saxophone notes. “My Ideal” is a conscientious postmodern investigation into the melodic and harmonic implications of a quaint, hip song.

This band can still burn. Marsalis has a hot new young drummer, Justin Faulkner, who generates vast quantities of clean energy. “Endymion” and “Whiplash” are centered on each song’s “emotional purpose,” but that purpose is shock and awe. Art Blakey would approve.


Thomas Conrad, 10/04/12
© 1999–2014 JazzTimes
 

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