There’s a whole wide open area of leftfield music that belongs entirely to Chicago. The 1960s social radicalism and futurist musical experiments of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and its parent organisation the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), fused into punk and alternative attitudes with the founding of labels like Thrill Jockey and Touch & Go, fed the jazz-electronic-dub-“post-rock” genre meltdown of bands like Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise and Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Quartet/Orchestra in the 1990s, and is still vividly present in a sprawling and endlessly collaborative scene most obviously embodied by the dazzlingly intense output of the International Anthem label.
If there’s one musician that embodies all of this, it’s guitarist Jeff Parker. An adoptive Chicagoan since 1991 he’s been a member of Tortoise and Chicago Underground, joined the AACM, and collaborated with a dizzying array of fringe and relatively well-known musicians right through to he and members of his “IVtet” acting as back-up band for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea on his much acclaimed Honora LP this year. Berklee-educated, fully jazz-immersed, but endlessly open-minded with a (post) punk spirit, Parker on his solo work has forged a kind of geometric, groovy minimalism bubbling with his individual personality but also consciously articulating his home city’s sonic identity too.
So Happy Today, his seventh album as headline artist of the 2020s alone, consisting of two 20-minute-plus tracks recorded live in LA’s Lodge Room Studio. Each unfolds slowly, comfortably, from repeated micro-motifs as Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson lock into a telepathic state they’re clearly endlessly familiar with and happy in – but as it grows it gets groovier and earthier and the players cut loose. It’s reminiscent of Australian trio The Necks if they flowed like a river rather than a glacier – and it’s got deep, deep hints of gospel and blues at the molecular level that at points even hint at the glorious idea of what might have happened if Charlie Mingus had played Steve Reich. Yes, it’s that good. There are whoops and hollers from those gathered in the studio at moments of particularly magical tempo shifts or groove consolidations, and they feel entirely natural and right. This is what real craft rooted in real culture sounds like.
Listen to "Like Swimwear (Part 2)":
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