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Big horn music
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Dead Cat Bounce could be Boston’s most mobile, adaptable jazz ensemble. With four horns, bass, and drums, they can conjure big-band heft. The sheer mix of horns — clarinet and flute in addition to a variety of saxophones, including two baritones — means that they can create big-band sonorities, too. And there’s no chording instrument to hinder sudden tonal shifts in their more "outside" excursions. Leader Matt Steckler writes rich pieces full of varied themes and time signatures. Although there are touches of lyricism, he favors big, muscly, riffing tunes anchored by bassist Arie Werbrouck and drummer Bill Carbone and laced with plenty of roiling counterpoint. At the Regattabar a week ago last Tuesday, Dead Cat Bounce drew from all three of the albums they’ve created over their seven years of existence, including a healthy helping from the new Home Speaks to the Wandering (Innova). They played tunes informed by the blues, New Orleans parade rhythms, Mingus-like sanctified church music ("Hepcat Revival," replete with double-time passages and Steckler’s handclaps and shouts), and rolling African cross rhythms. "Myopia Hunt Club" began with Steckler’s lone Shaw whistle (a kind of pennywhistle), then moved into a big-band ensemble feel, with alternating passages of 3/4 and 4/4 keeping everything percolating. As you’d expect, the horn combinations were a tonic, with plenty of humor in the delivery. "Department of Homeland Strategery" began with Steckler and Charlie Kohlhase squawking bird calls at each other through detached mouthpieces while Jared Sims and Drew Sayers punctuated the brawl with sharp single-note blasts in unison with bass and drums. On "Dis You, Dear," Steckler set his flute against clarinet, alto, and baritone (on disc, the number features him in an exhilarating, spit-rhythm, Rahsaan Roland Kirk–like solo). On "Cats: Fish or Finite," Steckler and Jared Sims began with a contrapuntal soprano duet that gradually settled into a harmonized theme before being joined by two altos. And throughout, Steckler knew how to back his soloists with either choral moans of response or hard riffing (on "Romulus and Remus," Kohlhase’s alto solo took an especially inspired flight as the other horns began to huff behind him). Given Steckler’s imagination, the possibilities for this band seem hardly exhausted. In addition to the group sound, everyone is a solid soloist, and newcomer Sayers has joined the veteran Kohlhase as a formidable baritone. Hey, at the risk of inviting low-note sludge, why not a duet for baritone saxophones?
BY JON GARELICK
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