via Downbeat.com
Few have done as much in recent years to showcase the versatile abilities of the harp as Brandee Younger. Her latest record, Gadabout Season, focuses on original writing, producing 10 tracks of new material accompanied by Rashaan Carter on bass and Alan Mednard on drums.
Recording with Alice Coltrane’s harp (Younger became its custodian in 2024), tracks like “End Means” channel Coltrane’s signature spiritual work, plucking languorously across the strings while featured flautist Shabaka trips through melodic lines that interweave with Mednard’s textural drumming, and “Reflection Eternal” gestures towards Coltrane’s ambient compositions. Other influences include Dorothy Ashby’s use of harp as a vocal top-line on “New Pinnacle,” picking out earworming motifs amid Carter’s loping bass rhythm.
Gadabout Season is a testament to Younger’s own developing style. “Breaking Point,” for instance, builds sharp interjections of harp melody over Mednard and Carter’s driving groove, sitting somewhere between swing and funk breakbeats, while “BBL” showcases Younger’s dextrous fingerpicking style, veering effortless to melodicism that echoes the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, the band’s fifth outing stakes its place among the best recordings of this decade.
The opening “Ware” illuminates the lineage from Newk and Trane to the titular David S. Ware with a fervid rhythmic underpinning and Lewis’ meditative lead, while “Remember Rosalind” layers a winsome melody over Chad Taylor’s slowly churning accompaniment.
The oft-recorded “Left Alone” drifts on Taylor’s reiterative foundation and Brad Jones’ resonant toms, providing fertile ground for Lewis’ rich exposition of the Billie Holiday/Mal Waldron melody.
Above all, this is a band that appreciates texture. “Multicellular Beings” and “Per 7” are both prime examples of how these four can shift their traditional roles to build performances that seem so purpose-built that listeners may mistake them for through-composed work.
Over the course of its five recordings, Lewis’ quartet has grown into the one of the most eloquent improvising groups in recent history. They appear to be transforming their 41-year-old Swiss boutique label the way John Coltrane did for Impulse! in the ’60s. —James Hale