Always present in the moment, due to their penchant for intuitive spontaneity and improvisational orgies, The Third Mind is what’s happening Right Now! Never mind that the all-star assemblage – co-founded by Dave Alvin and Camper Van Beethoven’s Victor Krummenacher – goes foraging again for forgotten ‘60s folk, soul and blues classics to reinterpret, losing themselves in acid-rock freakouts and murky mystery along the way to destinations unknown.
Their circle remains unbroken, as the quintet – featuring the dark warble of singer-songwriter Jesse Sykes – records on the fly in the round, relying only on their instincts and blind luck to get to places of transcendent, primal ecstasy in one take. It makes perfect sense then that The Third Mind should tackle Pharoah Sanders’ spiritual jazz epic “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” an oasis of reimagined summery sounds and grooves – is that throat singing in the background? – that grows into a dense, soaring jam before falling back to earth in sheer exhaustion and fading away. It’s as if The Rascals got religion and escaped to the tropics.
And what becomes of poor “Pretty Polly,” the traditional murder ballad ominously revisited here. Rolling on in a gypsy caravan of bongos, pounding piano and wailing guitars, it tangles with the devil in a variegated inferno of tortured, psychedelic blues, which re-emerge in a smoldering “Reap What You Sow” – once tailored for Otis Rush – that pours out its heart in a violent reckoning of turbulent organ smog, crashing drums and cymbals, and twin guitar leads turning themselves inside out to see how high they can climb.
Held closely by a trembling Sykes, Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” cascades gracefully, every corner of the flowing hymn richly shaded and filled with glorious sound, while the sense of foreboding that grips The Youngbloods’ “Darkness, Darkness” is enhanced, its black, witchy magic made even more alluring. Composed by Sykes and Alvin, “Before We Said Goodbye” is the only original here, and it’s a sophisticated bit of late-night jazz fusion that feels right at home amongst these disparate characters, each with its own story to tell.
Although everything feels unrehearsed, the product of off-the-cuff inspiration and preternatural chemistry, not a note feels out of place. Wild and unpredictable, the soloing is, nonetheless, expressive and precise, stinging and flying without a net, backed by a synergistic rhythm section that goes along peacefully until it, too, explodes. It might be the powerful keyboards, however, that feed this monster and get it to do what they want. Demanding a captive audience immediately, Right Now! is out of patience, as the title implies. Take a leap of faith, just like The Third Mind, and be transformed.
