Some say Neneh Cherry is back. Nonsense, she and her vastly impressive talents never left. Some say The Thing play a load of formless racket. Hooey, they’re as methodical as an unusually suave trio of Chess Club presidents. Some say The Cherry Thing is a strange curiosity. Baloney, it’s a first-class record that details one of the strongest and most sensible collaborations of recent years.
As concerns The Cherry Thing, there are the obvious correlations and symmetries. Neneh Cherry was the step-daughter of the late great trumpeter/cornetist Don Cherry, he of the now legendary Ornette Coleman groups that basically defined an early dominant strand of free jazz.
And Scandinavian jazzmen Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten play free and hard in an extremely modern context but are also sensibly informed by the innovations of the past; therefore it’s not a bit surprising their name derives from a tune found on Where is Brooklyn?, Cherry’s 1966 Blue Note LP.
But Neneh is far more than just a flesh and blood conduit between a musically innovative ancestor and his young descendents. Some only know her through “Buffalo Stance,” her rather excellent 1988 single or the album that included it, the highly enjoyable Raw Like Sushi. Others are familiar with her follow-up albums’ Homebrew and Man, the latter featuring “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’Dour, an enormous hit nearly everywhere in the world except the United States, presumably because a big portion of Americans find the sound of voices singing in a foreign language either distasteful or unappealing.
It’s also no secret that Cherry began her career in association with post-punk cornerstones The Slits and through the formation of her own band Rip Rig + Panic. Too few have heard that group, for they were at times very good, but even fewer realize the band’s name derives from a masterful 1965 LP from Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Ignorance of this link is no crime, of course. It is worth bringing up however, for here’s Kirk on the significance of the record’s title from the original liner notes: “Rip means Rip Van Winkle (or Rest in Peace?); it’s the way people, even musicians are. They’re asleep. Rig means like rigor mortis. That’s where a lot of peoples mind are. When they hear me doing things they didn’t think I could do they panic in their minds…”
Of course, UK post-punk was rubbing up against all sorts of unexpected influences and inclusions during this era, as James Blood Ulmer’s “Jazz Is the Teacher, Funk Is the Preacher” makes plain by its turning up on the New Musical Express’ highly representative C81 cassette. But the connection of Kirk’s above statement to the moniker of Neneh’s first band is more than just a cool reference; it also helps to illuminate how she navigated those future commercial breakthroughs with a strong artistic focus and a deep personal integrity always on hand.
Naturally, hanging out on tour busses while her stepdad broke major ground in the blending of avant-jazz and disparate global styles throughout the heady 1970s most assuredly assisted in defining the healthiness of her subsequent path, but it’s apparent that Neneh Cherry’s refusal to compromise to the often damaging concessions of odious commercial concerns should ultimately be credited to her alone; her life, musical and otherwise, didn’t start with “Buffalo Stance” and certainly didn’t end with “7 Seconds.”
As evidence, we have The Cherry Thing, a dialogue between two (or if you prefer, four) seriously inventive entities. And while six of the album’s eight pieces are interpretations of outside material, it’s inaccurate to describe the disc as a covers record; two tracks belong to the pen of contributors and are absolutely key in getting to the LPs crux of intermingling sensibilities.
Opening with “Cashback,” an outstanding Cherry original that commences with a truly killer and downright funky bass line via Håker Flaten, it sets the stage for the gradual entrance of all the other contributors; first Cherry’s assured voice and words followed by the spry, tough drumming of Nilssen-Love and the reed accents of Gustafsson, who eventually launches into fleet blasts of gruff, agitated glory in his fluid, huge soloing.
Gustafsson’s tone is no doubt formidable, but I think it’s inaccurate to describe it, or for that matter the music of The Thing overall, as being difficult. And the trio’s engagement with cover material of a popular (PJ Harvey, White Stripes, Led Zeppelin) if not necessarily populist nature informs a major part of their admirable desire to expand the possibilities of heavy duty jazz improvisation beyond the ears of the same few thousand global converts.
Sounds Like a Sandwich and Two Bands and a Legend, their pair of threeway blowouts with Norwegian indie rockers Cato Salsa Experience and Windy City multi-horn free master Joe McPhee make the point quite easily; covers range from The Sonics, The Cramps, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to Don Ayler, South African trumpet titan Mongezi Feza, and the aforementioned harmolodic stringduster Blood Ulmer.
The goal in The Thing’s words is to illustrate “how close musical styles are today, how similar the energy is and can be, and how much today`s audience is melted together, devoted to creative music.” And The Cherry Thing’s second and penultimate tracks bring this home with flawless expansiveness and precision.
Suicide’s magnificent “Dream Baby Dream” has fairly recently been in the spotlight as one of Bruce Springsteen’s gestures of contempo relevance, but its inclusion here sets a tone of beatific, soulful yearning, Cherry’s vocals showing her at the absolute top of her game. And the crispness of Håker Flaten’s vibraphone, the almost martial drumming of Nilssen-Love, and the low-end oomph of guest Per-Ake Holmlander’s tuba contrast superbly with Cherry and Mat’s avant-gutbucket wail.
But if “Dream Baby Dream” sets an early highpoint, it doesn’t linger on that achievement, as the ominous brooding bedrock of Mats’ lungs and Håker Flaten’s bowed bass at the beginning of Martina Topley-Bird’s “Too Tough To Die” gives way to a deliciously gnawing groove smartly expanding upon the track’s trip-hop origins, with Cherry’s woozy/bluesy tone interlaced with some exquisite avant-priestess vocal flurries.
From there “Sudden Moment,” the album’s Gustafsson original, opens with a sturdy, accessible tone, so much so that it could be momentarily mistaken for a performance captured at one of those killer ‘70s loft sessions that Douglas Records put out as Wildflowers. The mood of this mode continues even after, oh hell especially after Cherry’s vocals enter the fabric of the fray.
And I haven’t even mentioned the massive instrumental mid-section that builds to a soaring collective passage of gorgeous “ecstatic jazz” ala those masterful late-‘60s/early-‘70s Pharaoh Sanders releases, say Karma or Black Unity for just two swell examples, though unlike some of those extensive sidelong-plus excursions, this is far more abbreviated in its flights of freedom.
Though to be correct, what’s here is not really “free”, at least not in the template of collective improvisation ala early Ornette. And The Cherry Thing is surely not avant-garde in the true sense of term. This is instead what contemporary jazz should actually encompass, specifically a study in adventurousness that is inextricable from the past but in no way beholden to it.
Maybe the most leftfield cover here is MF Doom’s “Accordion,” which is wickedly funky and true to the original, though in the tradition of “outside” jazz the music never overstates its tightness. This is particularly evident in the fiery looseness of Nilssen-Love’s drums, and it underscores one of the record’s best qualities, namely that while obviously the work of much thought and practice it never suffers from sounding rehearsed. Plus, Cherry’s swagger can’t help but remind me a bit of Jeanne Lee on Archie Shepp’s masterful Blasé.
And the reading of her step-pop’s “Golden Heart,” where the processed vocals help to pull this version of an already non-traditional tune (part of the title suite on Complete Communion, another Blue Note classic from ‘66) far away from any jazz-centric norms.
But it’s the take on The Stooges’ “Dirt” that truly seals the deal. The largeness of the opening reed flutter evidences without question that Mats is indeed a monster on whatever axe he wields, and his sawing, swaying, and yes even swinging sax line expresses all that is brilliant and everlasting about Detroit’s finest sons.
All the while Cherry emotes like a woman who is not only well acquainted with the spirit of Iggy but can channel his essence with total ease, in the process sending a batch of dime-store divas far back behind the woodshed to work out some new moves. And this time Cherry joins in with the track’s instrumental freak-out, at least before it transforms into a total blizzard of 21st century skronk, a sound not unlike something recorded for the BYG/Actuel label but soaked in battery acid and slid through your mail slot by a postman who looks suspiciously like Kevin Whitehead.
It needs mentioning that “Dirt” isn’t actually on the vinyl of The Cherry Thing. It is however on the CD that’s included with the LP, a gesture that easily proves that all involved with this record’s creation and manufacture clearly get the gist of what’s currently happening on a worldwide musical scale.
Winding down with a splendid version of Coleman’s “What Reason,” this release is destined to be one of the finest (and most spiritedly punk) jazz releases of the year, a circumstance that will also make it a clear contender for the best of 2012.
Graded on a Curve: A+
