Shelving 2005: The Jazzed Up Shelf

Most of the albums here are not straight-up Jazz, but the tunes, compositions, and feel is definitely jazzed up. The individual discs will actually be classified later under Electronica or College/Art Rock or Jazz-influenced Rock.


Psapp use found sound like collagists and electronicists, but play with melodies, patterns, and composition like a jazz combo. A squeaky toy punctuates the beat on “Rear Moth,” and that squeaky toy is just as viable a part of the piece as the more standard keyboards, voices, and drum patterns. The music on Tiger, My Friend (The Leaf Label) is beautiful, tender, blipped, and nightclub ambient noise. Exquisite.

Speaking of electronicists doing jazz, Koop combine strong Electronica dance elements with jazz standard settings. Their Waltz for Koop (Palm Pictures) was released back in 2001, but it came across my desk in 2005. Listen to the Brubeck-ish piano and drums on “Tonight,” with Mikal Sundin’s smoky vocals, are you’re transported to 60’s films of cars driving through Paris in the rain. Yet, these jazz tunes add sampled elements, like on Terry Callier’s “In a Heartbeat,” remixed with the beat coming on like strut walk down the alley on the way to the club.

“North American Laundromat” on Tribeca’s Incident at the Metropolis (Granada Music) comes through Steely Dan back to jazz with heavy doses of funk hearkening back to the real Thomas Dolby who knew how to jazz his rock. Howard Jones couldn’t keep up with this, Manheim Steamroller played with their voices but ultimately found boredom, but Tribeca grooves right downtown. Joe Jackson—the jazzy Joe Jackson—lurks in the wings. What you’ll find with Tribeca is the kind of jazzed up music that still can bang the piano in a rock club (“Monument Today”).

Klaxon horns greet you on “Never Let Them Catch You Crying,” a jazzy ditty, almost a throwaway little chorus, which is drowned out by the sound of fire? A mine collapse? Whether those warning sirens mean “Dive!” in a submarine or “Collapse!” in a mine, the sound is timely. More Dogs play with organs, percussion, found sound, vocals, and other instruments to make their College/Art Rock that is like soundtrack music to short vignettes, bounced along, created before your very ears. Never Let Them Catch You Crying (Monitor) finds its core with “Teenage Bunker,” marching band drums and whistles interrupted by odd keyboards, perhaps led by a director who often forgets to keep the beat proceeding, and yet, as soon as he gives the cue, the drums are there, and you’re ready to march to the end of the avant-garde stadium.

Here’s the straight Jazz album on the Jazzed Up Shelf: Charlie Peacock with Love Press Ex-Curio (Runway Network). That’s not to say that this jazz is by the number, pedantic, or formulaic. That’s just to say that Charlie Peacock’s album is the only one that actually says: “File Under Jazz.” As mentioned in the Andy Hunter review (see above), Peacock is one of the busiest Christian producers, and his past albums could’ve been more correctly classified as rock albums. Yet, here Peacock taps a whole range of artists to vamp, solo, follow the star, and otherwise do the jazz thing with the said leader pounding and tickling the piano and Rhodes. The R.I.Y.L. (Recommended If You Like) is listed as John Scofield or Bela Fleck. There are certainly tones of the Flecktones here, its jazz that borrows from a rock foundation and unafraid of importing whatever other elements are necessary to layer the composition in such a way as to represent the city: from subway to sidewalk to walk up apartment to low-rise condo to upper level management to window washer on the 100th floor back down to the dumpster in the loading dock. Another touchpoint would be Bruce Hornsby’s jazzy piano.

The final artist here on the 2005 Jazzed Up Shelf is here because he belongs in the Jazz-influenced Rock section, although he only belongs there because there’s another Country-influenced artist there who does so much jazz dabbling that it’s hard to ignore that side of things. In other words, Dana Cooper is in the Jazz-influenced Rock section because of Lyle Lovett. Cooper’s Made of Mud (King Easy) has all of the Country twang, acoustic guitar picking, and other signs of Nashville. However, Cooper also has Lovett’s way of letting that twang swing. He’s a singing cowboy (“Comic Tragedy”) who can syncopate the beat, who would throw the NASCAR crowd into confusion when the song grooved instead of just stomping on down to the finish line. If you often find yourself coming to Country music through the artists that are at the backdoor letting in all of the riff-raff into the scene, the riff-raff like rock, punk, and jazz, then come on around back. Meet Dana Cooper. He’ll help you get into the club. He winks, sings the rocking “Sit This One Out,” and waits to see what happens when he changes up the rhythm for the next number on the set list.