‘Jazz.’ It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Encompassing over a century of music, it conjures a mass of styles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop to Ornette Coleman’s freeform extemporisation to Nubya Garcia’s afro-futurism, and all stops in-between. Even Jamiroquai is classed as, of all things, ‘acid jazz’, and like ‘classical’ – which embodies Beethoven, Shostakovich, Cage and Max Richter – and, of course, ‘indie’, ‘jazz’’s almost limitless scope has rendered the word strangely meaningless.
Indeed, the genre’s become such a broad church its associations can seem bewildering, contradictory and even occasionally off-putting. These days it’s often used as a mere nod to instrumentation, but to some it’s a signal of free-thinking improvisation, to others technical discipline, while it’s as good as a red flag to those whose prejudices are based on limited experience (or The Fast Show’s Louis Balfour).
Nonetheless, it covers 2022’s Activities, Anna Butterss’ acclaimed debut, and Jeff Parker’s gently free-wheeling Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy, released the same year and on which Butterss also performs. Then there’s last year’s Lados B, recorded by Daniel Villareal with Parker and Butterss, and this year’s fusion-filled Small Medium Large by quintet SML, which Butterss co-founded in her adopted Los Angeles hometown.
Now it’s to be applied to Mighty Vertebrate, which provokes an urge – albeit unnecessary – to be defensive of Butterss’ second solo album. Not that it’s undeserving of the label. The bassist studied jazz at the University of Adelaide, the city where they were born, and afterwards received a scholarship to earn a Master of Music at Indiana University. In addition, aside from the aforementioned Parker, to whom the 33-year-old is something of a protégé, they’ve worked with, among others, Grammy-nominated Larry Goldings and Grammy-winning Meshell Ndegeocello.
Certainly, “Ella” is a nocturnal number on which SML bandmate Josh Johnson’s breathy saxophone casts a smoky spell, and “Lubbock” explores brighter but similar territory, a lilting tremolo guitar joining co-producer Ben Lumsdaine’s brushed cymbals and, again, Johnson’s saxophone. But any emphasis on such traditions risks overlooking other influences – afrobeat, hip-hop, post-rock, funk – with which this record’s been ‘jazzed up’.
Given the nature of others who’ve called upon Butterss’ talents, this is hardly surprising. They include Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes and both Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser, to whose Where Is Anne Frank? soundtrack the Australian contributed. Each has found something in Butterss’ work that aligns closely with their own, and it’s most likely a shared innovatory spirit. Of Activities, they told online zine Off Shelf, “I didn’t want to make a jazz record, or that if there were jazz elements in the music – which there definitely are – that we filtered them through a different lens.”
Thus, like their debut, Mighty Vertebrate exhibits broad but blurred horizons on which jazz is just one of many features, often only a shade more prevalent than on, say, Tortoise’s TNT (on which Parker himself played in 1998, and whose Johnny Herndon provides this album’s artwork). Opener “Bishop”’s intoxicatingly airy shuffle starts with Butterss’ winding bassline, easily mistaken for one from The Smile’s Wall Of Eyes – like “Read The Room”’s or “Friend Of A Friend”’s – but adds Latin percussion and flashes of a guitar riff recalling TNT’s “In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women And Men”. There are also hints of the latter in the fragile “Pokemans”, while “Breadrich” is built around a simple riff and a lumbering, looped rhythm which patiently develops into a dramatic, funk-and prog-fuelled feast of soaring synths and haphazard guitar solos which Lalo Schifrin might have admired.
There’s a hint of Schifrin, too, in the delightfully meandering “Shorn”, whose polyrhythms spur on Johnson’s often racing saxophone lines, while a muted, pastoral breakdown heralds a return to Butterss’ first instrument, flute. The brooding “Seeing You” builds in the manner of Every Day-era Cinematic Orchestra, and “Dance Steve” opens like a track from the same band, adding spartan programmed drums to cultivate a daylight comedown before Parker steps in on guitar, energising the track with pleasingly breezy melodies in a soulful, almost ’80s vein.
Mighty Vertebrate concludes with “Saturno”, whose complex rhythm carries another smooth sax solo over Butterss’ solid bass. It’s ‘jazz’ through and through, and yet not long ago this progressive approach might also have been called post-rock – had the right ’90s Chicago band, for instance, performed it – while nowadays one might be tempted instead to call this ‘post-jazz’. Nonetheless, perhaps the best way to think of Butterss’ work is as simply ‘jazz plus’. It’s suitably inclusive and ultimately most reflective of her sweeping ambitions.
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