Presenting the listener with a song, a predictable melody, and a set of lyrics that essentially tell you what the artist wants you to think it is about, can be unadventurous. Most modern, popular music is based on such an idea, and that is fine if you want mere entertainment.
But sometimes, meeting the music halfway is much more rewarding. And so it is with the latest album from Landæus Trio, Resillience. This Swedish three-piece, led by pianist Mathias Landæus, pays tribute to the musical freedom fighters, those pushing music and art into new realms, a group to which he, along with drummer Cornelia Nilsson and bassist Johnny Åman, indeed belong.
Their medium is a free and eclectic take on jazz forms, sometimes fractured and spaceous, such as the opener, “Glömska av bly,” and other times more consistent and beat-driven, such as “Clubs and Spades,” a song sonically moulded, perhaps, by Mathias’s time in 1990s New York.
There are staccato grooves with the aptly named “Start and Stop, Stop and Start,” and there is even a gorgeously gentle take on Sade’s classic, “Love is Stronger Than Pride.”
And through it all, the playing blends a freedom of spirit, wandering between melodic forms and motifs, styles and sounds garnered from the whole story of jazz music, from the traditional to the experimental, the popular to the more niche directions. It is simultaneously traditional and forward-thinking, like using a music history lesson to extrapolate the sounds of the future.
I wouldn’t claim to be knowledgeable about jazz, yet for me, it is the freedom, the playfulness, and the creativity not found in other forms of the genre that has won me over. Hmm, maybe I’m a jazz fan after all, I just hadn’t found the right artists.
Landæus Trio from Live Music from Sweden on Vimeo.
