On 2020's
Hug!, drummer
Matt Wilson leads his ebullient, often irreverent pianoless quartet on what feels like a mission to get you to smile. An adventurous drummer with a playfully hard-swinging post-bop sensibility,
Wilson has led various incarnations of his quartet since the '90s. Here, he reunites the same group that appeared on 2014's
Gathering Call with pianist
John Medeski, including cornetist
Kirk Knuffke, saxophonist
Jeff Lederer, and bassist
Chris Lightcap. Both
Lederer and
Lightcap are longtime associates of
Wilson's going back at least as far as 2009's
That's Gonna Leave a Mark. Similarly,
Knuffke has been a close collaborator since 2015, having played on several of the drummer's albums and in his
Sifter trio with guitarist
Mary Halvorson. All of which is to say that each musician brings a shared musical language to their work on
Hug!, an eclectic album that casually evokes the joyously outre work of artists like
Ornette Coleman,
Lester Bowie, and
Sun Ra. The album kicks off with
Gene Ammons' "The One Before This," a bluesy number delivered in a tipsy, shoot-from-the-hip style -- the kind of thing
Dizzy Gillespie would play halfway through a concert of heady bebop, just to get the crowd clapping. From there, they dive headlong into
Abdullah Ibrahim's South African-tinged "Jabulani" and
Charlie Haden's brisk "In the Moment," both of which showcase the quartet's deeply intuitive grasp of
Ornette Coleman's buoyant, harmolodic free jazz style. At the center of he album is the acerbic and satirical art collage "Space Force March/Interplanetary Music," in which
Wilson sets President
Donald Trump's speech announcing the creation of a U.S. Space Force to an off-kilter marching band anthem of skronky horns and skittering xylophones before launching into a cartoonishly sung Space Force theme song. Less broadly delivered is the drummer's agonizingly romantic ballad "Everyday with You," in which
Knuffke and
Lederer harmonize in spare, dusky tones. We also get a spritely rendition of
Dewey Redman's "Joie de Vivre" and a sweetly attenuated take on
Roger Miller's 1965 hit "King of the Road," the latter of which features chummy cornet and clarinet interplay between
Knuffke and
Lederer.
Wilson also draws upon his childhood love of '60s pop elsewhere, as on his original "Sunny & Share," in which he pushes
Sonny & Cher's "And the Beat Goes On" through a kaleidoscopic blender of Middle Eastern free jazz. Conversely, the title track is a shiny, foot-tapping anthem with string accents that brings to mind the feel-good AM instrumental pop of
Herb Alpert. Enjoyably unpredictable,
Hug! is an album full of risk-taking fun that dares you to embrace it. ~ Matt Collar
