Led Bib – It’s Morning – [TrackList follows] – RareNoise RNR0108, 40:18 [9/27/19] ****:
(Sharron Fortnam, Jack Hues – vocals; Chris Williams – alto saxophone; Pete Grogan – alto and tenor saxophone; Elliot Galvin – keyboards, piano; Liran Donin – bass, backing vocals (track 2); Mark Holub – drums; Susanna Gartmayer – bass clarinet; Irene Kepl – violin; Noid – cello)
English modern jazz group Led Bib has always embraced change. Since their debut, Arboretum (2005), Led Bib has fused exploratory jazz improvisation with heavy rock and prog-rock. 2019 marks another shift in Led Bib’s career trajectory. On Led Bib’s eighth release, the forty-minute, nine-track It’s Morning the core band of saxophonists Pete Grogan and Chris Williams; bassist Liran Donin; drummer Mark Holub; and new keyboardist Elliot Galvin (who replaces Toby McLaren) are joined by a vocalist. Mezzosoprano Sharron Fortnam of the cross-disciplinary music ensemble North Sea Radio Orchestra is front and center. There are guests as well, comprising a bass clarinetist; a cellist; and Wang Chung singer/lyricist Jack Hues, best known for the ‘80s new wave hit “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” It’s Morning is available as a four-panel CD digipack compact disc; a gatefold 12-inch black, heavyweight vinyl LP; and as high-quality downloads. This review refers to the CD version.
It’s Morning is flanked at the start and end by two short ambient tunes (the numinous “Atom Story” and the atmospheric “Set Sail”) which include Fortnam and edge the narrative-like album, though there is no formal plot, and this is not a conceptual project. You won’t know from listening to the material, but Holub admits Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead influenced It’s Morning. That’s because it’s not a strict connection. Rather, Holub abides by those groups’ philosophy of following one’s own instincts wherever they may lead. The record picks up steam with the second piece, the grooving “Stratford East,” apparently titled after the large theatre in Stratford in the London borough of Newham. Cello, distorted electric keyboards, Holub’s beating drums and lithe sax comport with Fortnam’s vocals and Hue’s lyrics about a distant future where water envelops everything, akin to the desert landscape which covers former greatness in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem, “Ozymandias.” The brief :39 title track—also with Hues’ lyrics—acts as a sort of epilogue to “Stratford East,” with imagistic poetry: “Blue line struggles to reach the right side of the screen of light, messages sent now, wait for reply.”
The apex and midpoint is the 11-minute epic, “Fold,” which showcases Led Bib’s modernistic jazz-improv inclinations, as it slowly and inexorably escalates from mild to wild, from gentle to full-on skronk mode. If a specific Led Bib track conjures early Pink Floyd, this one does: think “Interstellar Overdrive.” The Floyd never had anyone with Fortnam’s vocal strengths, though, which come to the fore when the tune decelerates as she sings her enigmatic lyrics about how “time is a haunting memory…one that hides” and “feel free to move the pieces around.” There’s a similar ebb-and-flow arrangement to the reflective “To Dry in the Rain,” where Fortnam sings about putting her loved one’s wings out to dry and if her god-like partner is happier mapping the universe into existence than being with her. As Fortnam repeats the final line, “I know where you are” over and over, Led Bib builds from a whispered sound to a fiery force before receding into plaintive terrain led by Galvin’s lamenting acoustic piano solo outro, which segues into the nostalgic “O,” where Fortnam sings about redirecting one’s doubts and listening to one’s dreams or passions. How many songs reference Edward Bernays, “the father of public relations”? That would be Led Bib’s “Cutting Room Floor,” which uniquely combines Fortnam’s lovely mezzosoprano with Hues’ added spoken word supplements. The album concludes with the rippling, echoing “Flood Warning,” with Fortnam’s intangible verse about rain, cold water, salt water and forgotten umbrellas; and the aforementioned “Set Sail,” which namechecks and alludes to the main character from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem about the far-ranging traveler Ulysses.
TrackList:
Atom Story
Stratford East
It’s Morning
Fold
Cutting Room Floor
To Dry in the Rain
O
Flood Warning
Set Sail
—Doug Simpson
