Any band that would call their album Looks Like A Pie To Me is all right in my book. Married Couple make great music as well. The San Francisco based quartet have eclectic influences that appear in both subtle and blatant guises. The trombone, tenor sax, acoustic bass, and drums instrumentation lends itself well to the freer side of jazz, which is where most of this music begins. There is some pretty overt grooving on the CD as well, and the starkness of the quartet setting is filled out by a wonderful ensemble concept that Married Couple maintains in both composed and improvised sections of the music.
It is obvious that improvisation is the focus of the music, but the compositions integrate seamlessly into the improvisations, and the improvisations are so coherent, that it can be difficult to tell the two apart. The music searches and stretches, but never really becomes noisy. It is easy to listen to, especially since every track is under 7 minutes. Some of my favorite moments include “Fold You Under” which features collective blowing from the horns with a nice relaxed yet crisp groove. “The Field” is interesting in that there are about three minutes of introspective and sparse improvisations before the melody (which is quite catchy) comes in to end the track. This is definitely music that deserves to be heard by a wider audience.
The band’s website seems to be dead, but you can hear clips and buy the CD at CD Baby.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks very much for reviewing the record and playing a couple tracks on your podcast. A little behind the scenes info on the recording; “The Field” was recorded in the traditional manner of melody-improvisation-melody, but when it came time to figure out the track sequence we couldn’t quite figure out a musical flow we were happy with, until we cut the initial melody statement on “The Field” and had it come directly out of the preceding tune “Tripoli” into the trombone/bass inprovisation. A simple but effective arranging technique – just hack off the first half of the song!
Yeah Man,
Props to Jeff. Thanks for the review and podcasting shout out. Robert told me about this site and i just checked it out. Thanks for the kind words about the band and the recording. I wish we were still playing! Rob? Jason? Lisa? you out there? lets do a tour!
Jonah
Thanks for that insight, Rob. It makes sense that the opening melody on that tune would affect the sequencing, because it is so strong. Everytime I listen to that CD, that groove from the end of The Field is what sticks in my head for a day or two.