By Nick Ostrum
Since launching in 2018, Out of Your Head records has quickly emerged as a
cornerstone label of the next wave of free jazzers, especially those
circulating around New York. Mean Reds features a few of the label’s
mainstays (and founders), Scott Clark on drums and Adam Hopkins on bass, as
well as saxophonist John Lilley and trumpeter Bob Miller. More prominent in
this session is the quintet’s leader and vocalist, Laura Ann Singh. A
vocalist of many styles, she shone brightly on Clark’s 2023
Dawn & Dusk
, which was one of her first recorded forays into this the freer musics.
Mean Reds is her first headliner.
The first phrases of the opener, River, are a repeated four-note drift on
trumpet, and light splatters of string and percussion. Then, Singh matches
the now drafty trumpet lines with her proposition, “Maybe our love is a
river.” From there, the song – and really the album – unfold into a series
of imagist mediations and poetic propositions that link the human condition,
nature, technology, and a range of other concerns both pressing and playful.
Her lyrical style and delivery veers between the heyday jazz divas and a
slightly less gruff Chrissie Hynde. Comparisons with Hannah Marks’
overlooked gem from 2023 Outsider, Outlier, also on OOYH, are also
in order in those moments when Singh’s group taps its inner aggression and
outrage and spill over into wails, declamations, and other noise.
Take one of the standouts, Monster. It is scorcher, which drags the
listener through a storm as Singh repeats the question “Is this the American
dream?,” a phrase which morphs in the second verse into “This is my American
scream.” This is as much punk rock and raucous Björk as it is jazz. Toward
the end, the song clarifies itself as an indictment of our current age of
obsessive (and seemingly inescapable) petromodernity, as Singh asserts “The
highway is a monster.” Here, of course, the highway is metaphor as well
object, doubling as a warning about the suicidal direction the world seems
to be veering. The backbeat is an insistent drum and bass staccato pulse
that seems to repeat endlessly with just minor embellishments as the band
breaks out into full fanfare around Singh’s proclamations.
Monster is just one among the variety Mean Reds presents. For the
few punk bangers (Monster, She Said, the playful bedroom indie track
Counting), there are smoky ballads that, even when at their most direct, are
just distorted enough to sound subversive. As Strange as It Is is a fine
example. It embraces Ornette’s harmolodics, if not the system itself then at
least the feeling that comes through so powerfully in pieces such as What
Reason Could I Give. In that, it soars. One other important note is the
band. These guys can tear, but they rarely do. Instead, this album showcases
their ability to play an incredible backing band. Never is there tension
between musicians elbowing for space or filling the air with too much sound.
They are stand-out in those moments when they do break out into bop runs and
blares. But, in a sense, they stand out most by holding to the background
and laying the solid but unassuming basis on which Singh can realize her
vision. And what a colorful (or maybe just many perplexing and divergent
shades of red?) and engaging vision it is.
Mean Reds is available as vinyl and download via Bandcamp:
.