Sean Noonan Pavees Dance – Tan Man’s Hat – [TrackList follows] – RareNoise RNR106, 65:14 [3/29/19] ****:
The term ‘otherworldly’ gets used a lot. It’s entirely appropriate for the 65-minute, nine-track album Tan Man’s Hat from drummer Sean Noonan and his quintet Pavees Dance. This is futuristic material with a science fiction foundation which mixes poetic spoken-word elements, neo-jazz, progressive rock and avant-garde slices. Tan Man’s Hat is the sophomore release for Sean Noonan Pavees Dance and once again Noonan pairs up with vocalist/visual artist Malcolm Mooney (co-founder of krautrockers Can) and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma (Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, James Blood Ulmer, others). Joining this version of Noonan’s ensemble is experimentalist guitarist Ava Mendoza (who has recorded or been on stage with Carla Bozulich, Fred Frith, Nels Cline, Tacuma, Mike Watt, and more) and keyboardist Alex Marcelo, a longtime Noonan collaborator who was in a previous Noonan-led group. These five noisemakers create music which is a harmolodic jazz-rock conglomeration, taking Coleman’s musical ideas into a new frontier. The band name Pavees Dance comes from Noonan’s Irish heritage. Pavees are nomadic travelers who make items from available materials, a stimulus Noonan brings to his atypical compositions, which are an amalgam of eclectic inspirations. Noonan explains, “That fits in perfectly with the wandering storyteller concept I’ve been developing throughout my work, merging West African and Irish storytelling traditions. The name Pavees Dance really embodies that.” Tan Man’s Hat can be purchased as a four-panel CD digipack; various digital downloads; and as a gatefold, 12-inch heavyweight green vinyl LP (with digital download code). The fantastical cover artwork was done by Mooney. This review refers to the CD.
This is collective music which often crosses from pre-planned to complete spontaneity. That includes the lyrics. Mooney works with written text the way a jazz musician manipulates an instrument, diving into improvisatory voyages. “Malcolm develops or adapts lyrics on the spot,” Noonan clarifies. “I gave him a road map for each of the songs and then let him do his thing. He shaped his own stories from the ideas that I gave him, which was a really meaningful way for me to develop as a lyricist and to evolve myself artistically.” The album commences with the cosmic trek narrative, “Boldly Going,” where Mooney sing-speaks about fearlessly going where no others have gone before, while the band generates careening, cyclic and energetic prog-jazz music. Another piece which has an intergalactic perspective is the roiling, rock-inclined “Girl from Another World” a hard-hitting track about an alien who visits our neck of the galaxy. Mendoza’s guitar pyrotechnics are a fiery and prominent highlight of “Girl from Another World.” The skittering, jumpy “Martian Refugee” continues the SF slant with a song about how the Earth might welcome outsiders from another planet. The group contributes a bouncy and tilted groove which accentuates the situation of accepting people who are different from us. While there is an undercurrent of a socio-political viewpoint which bubbles under “Martian Refugee,” there is a larger measure of current events commentary during the driving “Tell Me.” Over an urgent and pulsing arrangement, Mooney conveys his candid opinion about political and mass media untruths about the military-industrial complex. His repetition of “tell me” becomes an incantation as well as a protest.
The lengthiest tune, the nearly 11-minute “Turn Me Over,” is a whimsical example of the band’s skewed humor. Noonan and Mooney share a phantasmagorical tale about a genie set free from the grooves of a vinyl record. At times Pavees Dance takes off on several tangents, from burlesque-type music to prog-jazz inclinations to rock-based parts, while the song’s main character promises to grant a wish if someone will release him from the LP’s grooves. Not all the material is drawn from SF and/or fantasy. The intense “Gravity and the Grave” blends lyrics penned by both Mooney and Noonan, which explore the somberness of mortality and dreaming of the great beyond. The nine-minute, jazz-tinted “The End of the Inevitable” has a similar expiration-of-existence philosophical characteristic, where Mooney muses on lineage, seeing the termination of life’s journey and the possibility of crossing over to eternity. The shortest number is the five-minute title track, which is also the oldest. The lyrics date back to Mooney’s tenure in Can but was not completed during Mooney’s participation in Can. Noonan provided new music and the result is a unique blues/jazz/rock hybrid which accelerates with a lively arrangement which hints at times to various classic rock archetypes. The expressive and idiosyncratic Tan Man’s Hat concludes with “Winter Inside,” which starts in a reflective, melancholy mood (but includes a powerful midpoint) where Mooney declares hope, a desire for acceptance and romance, and a yearning for light in all its manifestations.
Musicians:
Malcolm Mooney – vocals; Jamaaladeen Tacuma – bass; Ava Mendoza – guitar; Alex Marcelo – keyboards; Sean Noonan – drums, vocals, co-producer
TrackList:
Boldly Going
Gravity and the Grave
Tell Me
Martian Refugee
Turn Me Over
Tan Man’s Hat
The End of the Inevitable
Girl from another World
Winter Inside
—Doug Simpson
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