Is Jerome Sabbagh's Newest Album Making a Political Statement?

maybe, but your Apple watch gives you the same advice so....

Spins of Ray Charles's Ingredients In a Recipe For Soul—original ABC-Paramount pressing followed by a new Tangerine Records reissue appropriately pressed on orange vinyl— preceded a first play of Jerome Sabbagh's latest album of 8 originals each dedicated to a different individual, a few with whom he's crossed career paths, but others not.

Coincidentally, the bluesy opener "Lone Jack" dedicated to both Ray Charles and Sabbagh's producing and business partner Pete Rende created an unplanned but delightful segway.

While Ray's album with big band arrangements by Marty Paich, Benny Carter and others is explosive and exuberant despite being a string of down on your luck songs, Sabbagh's compositions and quartet arrangements are, as expected (at least on record), ruminative and cool—never fiery or explosive—moving from note to note with deliberate but swinging care. That said, the melancholic "Lone Jack" makes for a curious opening choice.

There are songs dedicated to knowns Sam Rivers, Stevie Wonder, Trent Reznor (!), Paul Motian, Kenny Barron and unknowns (probably Sabbagh friends and acquaintances) all dispatched with understated cool (well-reflected in the album cover artwork) by longtime Sabbagh musical associates Ben Monder on guitar and Joe Martin on bass, with Nasheet Waits on drums.

On "Lunar Cycle" dedicated to Sam Rivers, the cool group produces the most heat with Monder and Waits—guitarist left channel, drummer right—trading rhythmic licks. Sabbagh punctuates the piece near its conclusion. The side ends with the tune dedicated to Stevie Wonder and appropriately it's the most traditional and melodic in the set.

Side two opens with a bossa nova dedicated to Meaghan Glennan whoever she is and if you ask me (which Jerome did not) if you are going to dedicate tunes to friends and acquaintances maybe a short I.D. in some annotation would help fill in the story line!

Okay, I looked her up and found out she's a writer/editor/copy editor, proof reader and story teller and so is Jerome Sabbagh because this tune tells a pleasant one and the one I'd have started the album with had Jerome asked me but he didn't!

I don't have to tell you to whom "Mosh Pit" is dedicated. Right! Paul Motian. Kidding. I doubt Jerome met Trent Reznor in a mosh pit but the NIN founder and now film composer (he did the honors on the third "TRON" feature, I chose Wendy Carlos to score the first and it was a good choice) clearly inspired Sabbagh to go further out into free jazz territory than I can recall him going on record and the volume rises dramatically and with raucous and appropriate intent as the track begins so if you're listening late at night maybe have the remote handy! It's a relatively quick outburst and is soon over.

"Vanguard" for the late drummer Paul Motian is appropriately the most rhythmically infused composition. It moves through time changes more than the others and for what it's worth to you, is my favorite. Again Monder and Waits forge a special and most attractive musical simpatico.

The oft recorded veteran jazz pianist/educator Kenny Barron gets his tribute on the final tune "Unbowed". Barron of course played on Sabbagh's 2023 release Vintage. The album closer is another low key, meditative piece reflective of the album cover art.

The ensemble playing on this record, though mostly at a simmer, has some remarkable moments, particularly between Monder and Waits, though Monder throughout is stellar.

Which brings me to the album title's meaning. If the music is supposed to capture the current political gestalt of those unhappy with how things currently are, it does that! It was recorded November 7, 2024 two days following the presidential election but surely Sabbagh didn't write the tunes in two days, though the mood could have set in that evening.

And if the album title is intended to inspire listeners to put their downcast ways behind them and Stand Up! it well-captures the blues part but there's little in the way of inspiration to rise, so perhaps my take on the album title's meaning is as wet as the moisture coating the window on the album cover.

The sound is as you would expect from James Farber recording at Power Station, New York live to 1/2" tape on a custom tube Ampex 351 at 30 IPS. The soundstage is as on previous Farber/Sabbagh productions, "old school" with drums hard right, guitar (or keyboard) hard left and all else centered. Not everyone likes that spread though many of us do and it certainly lets you pay undivided attention to each musician's performance.

The album is available in standard vinyl, "One-Step" vinyl (numbered and limited to 1000 copies) as well as on CD and reel-to-reel tape all at the Analog Tone Factory website. Both vinyl versions are at Acoustic Sounds at the link below. (reviewed record was a "One-Step")

If you're not in the mood, this set can just pass you by, but if you let it sink in, it casts a spell from which you might find it difficult to (album title).