JOSH ABRAMS Cipher (Delmark) The quartet on Cipher first got together for a one-off gig at Lula Cafe in early 2000, and bassist Josh Abrams (a founding member of rustic minimalists Town and Country and the jazz trio Sticks and Stones) wisely decided to reconvene the personnel in a semiregular project. Trumpeter Axel Dorner lives in Berlin, so they’ve been able to play only a handful of shows since, but now at least we have a superb document of their work. On the album, the drummerless group–rounded out by guitarist Jeff Parker and reedist Guillermo Gregorio–displays chamberlike restraint in collective improvisations, a long-tone vehicle in which the players add overdubs without hearing the previous takes, and loosely swinging compositions that recast the multilinear jazz of Lennie Tristano’s late-40s crew using a modern vocabulary.
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CHE ARTHUR All of Your Tomorrows Were Decided Today (Flameshovel) Atombombpocketknife guitarist Che Arthur has performed live as an acoustic solo act, but on this recording he plays a band’s worth of instruments (everything but drums), which may explain the slightly stiff feel. But the real problem is his tuneless singing. Arthur’s voice sounds gawky in both roaring electric and rippling acoustic settings, and though the arrangements hint at the tightly wound intensity of Bob Mould’s work in Sugar, the hooks just aren’t there.
SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE Spires That in the Sunset Rise (Galactic Zoo Disk/Eclipse) One of the strangest, most compelling records to come out of Chicago in the last few years, the debut from the all-female Spires That in the Sunset Rise actively encourages confusion. The music–a discordant strain of psychedelic folk, more spooky than pretty, that sets ritualistic melodies, whoops, and chanting to ragged hand percussion and hypnotic riffs played on guitar, mbira, cello, harmonium, Autoharp, and other instruments–can feel meandering or unresolved at times, but the band members are gutsy enough to go wherever their instincts lead. Judging from their live show, they’re so committed to their own world there’s little chance of their dumbing it down so outsiders can follow along.
