Mythomania by Matt Booth & Palindromes

If you missed Matt Booth & Palindromes´ recent appearance at the ears&eyes Festival, you can still catch it at: www.earsandeyesrecords.com

“Mythomania” is the second release from New Orleans-based quartet Matt Booth & Palindromes. A premier ensemble in the city’s fruitful scene of creative improvised music, the band presents original music and a unique ensemble sound that pushes at the boundaries of what is generally accepted as “New Orleans music”. Helmed by bassist Matt Booth, Palindromes also features top sidemen from the city: saxophonist Brad Walker, guitarist Chris Alford, and drummer Doug Garrison. “Mythomania” features four of Booth’s own compositions and three unlikely covers (Egberto Gismonti, Melvin Gibbs, Dirty Projectors), offering an alternative take on contemporary jazz in the 21st century.

Recorded in late 2019 in the state-of-the-art concert hall at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, “Mythomania” finds the ensemble assured and interconnected, with three years of growth following their debut self-titled recording (Breakfast for Dinner Records, 2016). The earliest iteration of Palindromes was begun by Booth in Pittsburgh, PA in the early 2010s as a way to explore both his burgeoning compositional voice and his interest in underexplored repertoire (e.g. Ornette Coleman, Paul Motian, Carla Bley). Upon moving to New Orleans in 2015, his initial assemblage of personnel became its permanent lineup.

The music on “Mythomania'' conveys a desire of Booth’s to cover a wide scope of ground, both emotionally and stylistically. There are pockets of brooding, intense free improvisation, spacious and expansive aural meditations, earnest ballad lyricism, and an overall embrace of feels familiar to jazz and rock at large. Of the four original pieces penned by the bandleader, two feature the free-time experimentalism found in the writing of Motian or Coleman, and two, considerably more mellow in tone, follow more conventional jazz forms. The cover material is culled from three artists of very differing backgrounds yet tent towards more traditional songwriting, featuring intoxicating melodies at once beautiful and morose.

The breadth of each musician’s individual playing careers leads the band to navigate the repertoire of the record with stylistic ease and deep empathy. Booth is a co-leader of the modern jazz piano trio Extended, performs nationally as a member of the celebrated New Orleans organist/pianist John “Papa” Gros band, and has backed up an array of artists such as Aurora Nealand and Michael Glabicki. Brad Walker, who has toured the world with country star Sturgill Simpson, blues guitarist Ana Popvich, and can be seen with such New Orleans mainstays as Anders Osborne and George Porter, Jr, brings intense and thoughtful energy on the saxophone. Chris Alford, one of the most creative guitarists on the Gulf Coast, is a member of soul-jazz organist Robert Walter’s 20th Congress and has accompanied a variety of jazz artists including Cassandra Wilson and Mike Dillon. As the eldest member of the band, Doug Garrison brings wisdom, experience, and a connection to an earlier generation, deepening the music Palindromes makes together. He has played with such piano legends as Mose Allison and Phineas Newborn, Jr., is a member of roots-rock favorites The Iguanas and had a long-term association with rock icon Alex Chilton.


About the compositions:
“Ripped to Shreds” is the first of four original compositions of Booth’s to be featured on the album. The composition features distinctly different A and B sections which are separated by an open improvisation. The A section is a rubato sing-songy melody, reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s writing, especially in the blues language of its last two measures. A cosmically moody guitar feature begins the improvisational section, which gradually leads to a saxophone solo. The steady build in tension leads to the B section, based on a repetitive bass groove in 7/4 and a floating melody over top in an unrelated free tempo. This final four-bar melody is played first by the saxophone, and twice more doubled by the guitar in a loose unison.

“Diminutive Stature” is comprised of two sections of composed material, with space for improvisation written in. The first three minutes of the recording is an open improvisation and highlights the patience and space with which the band can inhabit while improvising. The bass and saxophone then join to play a written background figure while the drums and guitar continue their dialogue, concluding with a written guitar cadenza. This culminates in a Black Sabbath-inspired B section that features a frenetic sax solo. The piece abruptly concludes in this section with a new melody over a variation on the heavy metal riff.

Booth wrote “High Point” in August 2019 during a break in a tour, with three days off in High Point, NC. The chord progression is a reharmonization of a 12 bar blues tune, the melody evokes the mood of never-ending lazy summer days stuck in a house with no plans, and the groove is indicative of “Harvest”-era Neil Young. The form of this tune is relatively straightforward, until the band loops the final four measures of the piece for a saxophone solo.

“Structure,” written by Booth in 2009 while finishing his undergraduate degree at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, was revived for this record after sitting dormant for nearly a decade. The song is a jazz waltz and is the only piece on the album with a swinging 8th-note feel. Similar to “High Point,” the interpretation of the tune is relatively straightforward until the final melody, when a loop is created from the penultimate two bars, functioning as the climax to the song, and the album.

“Agua e Vinho,” composed by the Brazilian guitarist and pianist Egberto Gismonti, has a hauntingly beautiful minor-key melody song that has stuck with Booth since he first performed it in 2012. The subdued and evocative nature of the song allows the quartet to expressively tell a story with an uncommon subtlety. The bass solos first over the chord changes to the melody, which is followed by a sax statement over a much different texture: a new out-of-time, static harmony section. Also notable is Alford’s guitar work, which he overdubbed at various points to create a rich bed of sound during the intro, sax solo, and outro.

This interpretation of Dirty Projectors’ “Keep Your Name” stays very true to the original, resisting any urge for some clever jazz arrangement. The song follows a standard pop form, with the only improvising happening over the bridge section. With the lyrical content about a romantic break-up removed, the song becomes a soulful ballad feature for Brad Walker’s alto saxophone and Doug Garrison’s understated, yet insistent, groove.

The last of the three cover songs, “Howard Beach Memoirs,” was written by bassist Melvin Gibbs and was featured on the one-off 1987 album “Strange Meeting” by trio Power Tools, which featured Gibbs, Bill Frisell, and Ronald Shannon Jackson. The piece was written in memory of Michael Griffith, a 23 year old black man killed in a racially motivated hate crime in Queens, NY in 1986. Palindromes’ interpretation aims to capture the forcefulness and urgency of the piece’s original intention, which remains vital over thirty years later. Following the initial statement of the melody is an open improvisation, led by guitar then sax, maintaining the turbulent atmosphere throughout.

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