MUSIC

Bebop Club, Bristol (Fri 16 Dec)

Mike Willox has long been master of the element of surprise. Past combos like the art-prog Smith & Willox or deconstructive jazzers The Pollinators have presented deliciously naughty nights at The Bebop, genre-hopping wilfully around the boundaries of ‘the acceptable’. But this performance turns out to trump them all by virtue of its totally unexpected and shockingly buttoned-down niceness, offering well-crafted versions of classic jazz tunes with nary a ‘groove’ amongst them. Thus (wait for it) ‘Moon River’ begins with a genuinely soulful piano solo from Willox, the mood picked up by Jake McMurchie’s tenor sax (in late-night Dexter Gordon mode) and finally fleshes out when Will Harris’s understated bass and Mark Whitlam’s businesslike drums brush in. Willox’s piano takes the solo again and steers deftly away from cheese with some sardonic harmonics while keeping faith with the tune. The whole number is an effortless classic in the Blue Note style and the same can be said for Burt Bacharach’s ‘Wives and Lovers’. Even when Will Harris starts to wig out imaginatively on Wayne Shorter’s ‘Black Nile’, Willox gently reproves things, leaving Harris and Whitlam to settle for a light-touch swingbeat and walking bass exit that’s raffishly understated. It’s the encore before things get groovy, and the brusque swagger of ‘The In Crowd’ à la Ramsey Lewis is an almost vulgar intrusion, like a benign drunk from the pub next door who then insists on singing ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’. Given that this little cracker has come so early, the signs are that we will, indeed, do just that. (Tony Benjamin)

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2011