The seventh in a nine album series entitled Man’ish Boy that’s dedicated to exploring mental health in the Black community, Legend of e’Boy (The Hypervigilant Eye) vibrates with an emotional intensity not often found on jazz records. That’s not to say that there’s no emotion in jazz, of course – quite the contrary. But the magnitude of feeling behind each of the six tracks speaks to just how important this subject is to its creator. Saxophonist Darius Jones has suffered emotional trauma himself, so he knows whereof he speaks, or, rather, plays. Backed by bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver, Jones holds nothing back. The long, sustained lines of “We Outside” ride a roiling rhythm section that dances around the beat, like someone trying to keep centered in an ocean of chaos. Dropping any pretense of self-control in its focused fury, the near-brutal muscle of “No More My Lord,” based on an old prison song, fields desperation and bravado at once. The surprising appearance of the ballad “We Inside Now” indicates serenity may be just around the corner, as the healing clearly continues. The incredible “Another Kind of Forever” simply burns with the desire to know what life might have been like had trauma never entered it, its melody threatening to fall apart at any moment, but never doing so. A new paragon of passion and musical accomplishment, Legend of e’Boi puts Jones’ heart and guts on the line, and never falters.
