Record Review: Elaine Elias “Around The City” (Updated Feb 7, 2006)
While Elias is an established musician/ pianist / keyboardist / vocalist / songwriter of a high order, one would be well-advised to casually ignore all the jazz snobs who bleat for Elias to return to playing “real jazz.” A pedestrian listener such as myself can even vouch that without experimentation, fusing of different music traditions, and the need to break the bounds of what is considered “real jazz,” Louis Armstrong, Bird, Miles, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor would never have happened. The drive in modern day to petrify jazz into a respectable art form has backfired and made jazz stagnant and frighteningly outdated today.Ironically, what stodgy jazz connoisseurs regale as their iconic figure, Miles Davis, repeatedly broke the rules and courted many different music forms to make the continuum that is the heart of jazz pulse and breathe. Elaine Elias does just this. Those of us who love and listen to the so-called “hip” clubby/lounge music will truly appreciate the sonic adventure within “Around The City.” Club music often samples other people’s music passages into loops that- though stylish sounding- tends to entropy into banality. One has always wondered how the form could jettison in capable hands of great dexterity. Elias’s reading of Bob Marley’s “Jammin’” realizes this, with a momentum that sounds like a fluid updated sequel to Mile Davis’s Milestone. It’s fast, infectious, and reminiscent of the gyroscopic tension that Bebop was remembered for.
The track that is the pearl of the album however, is the stately “Slideshow.” How wonderfully it captures what I call that Brazilian “Certain Sadness” that Astrud Gilberto’s voice has come to embody. The lyrics are beautiful and the flamenco guitar and handclaps combined with crisp octaves on the piano are simply gorgeous. Just one listen puts me on the cliffside roads leading into that stretch of beach front in Ipanema.
Songs like the Latin tinged rhythm of “Running,” “Segredos,” and “Oye Como Va,” (suddenly sexy-sounding in the absence of Carlos Santana’s whiny electric guitar) to a traditional jazz ballad of Buddy Johnson’s “Save Your Love For Me” and a pop AOR easy-listening “We’re So Good” showcases Elias’s range. I hope Elias continues to explore. It’s a sheer joy to see and hear that bossa nova can continue to evolve and stay with the times.
