Lonnie Liston Smith JID017

Album review

Lonnie Liston Smith is the latest jazz-funk icon to be tempted back into the studio by Jazz Is Dead's Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. His 1970s Flying Dutchman recordings with the Cosmic Echoes offer a different approach to the jazz-rock fusion of the time. The keyboardist, deeply interested in Eastern and African spirituality, created a sweetly soulful brand of jazz fusion, where R&B and lithe funk held sway over rock. Before Lonnie Liston Smith JID017, he hadn't released an album since 1998's underrated Transformation. The musically savvy partnership of Muhammad and Younge talked him into headlining their live Black History Month series in February 2020, before COVID locked down the planet. The duo re-enlisted him in 2022 for this nine-track set at their studio. Smith plays Fender Rhodes and acoustic piano, while Muhammad plays bass guitar and Rhodes; Younge appears on electric guitars, bass, synth, clavinet, vibraphone, and Hammond B-3. Drums are handled alternately by Greg Paul and Malachi Morehead. Soul and gospel singer Loren Oden appears on four tracks.
Opener "Love Brings Happiness" is one of the Oden showcases. Smith's acoustic piano provides the modal frame as Muhammad paints it with Fender Rhodes. Younge sets up behind Oden, playing fuzzy, bright, shard-like guitar fills that recall those of Ernie Isely. Synths, filthy clavinet, and vibes all appear in the dense mix. Smith and Oden find their way onto another musical plane, pushing one another into the improv stratosphere. "Dawn" is a soulful instrumental wherein electric guitars, piano, synths, and saxes (played by Younge) meet bass and breaking, syncopated drums. The effect is breezy, airy, positive, and affirming. Oden also appears on "Cosmic Changes." Smith, Younge, and Paul offer an approach akin to the one Smith employed on jazz and blues singer Leon Thomas' Spirits Known and Unknown. An open modal chord sequence introduces Oden, who claims the poetic lyric, makes it soar, and meets the instrumentalists for mutual discovery -- all inside four minutes. Oden's last appearance is on "Love Can Be," which juxtaposes funky, cracking tom-toms, syncopated snares, Smith's gorgeous Rhodes playing, and Younge's B-3, synths, guitars, and horns. This is spiritual soul music at its best. Oden's control and range naturally rise above the band's intimate, instinctual interplay. "Fête" is Latinized jazz fusion with a killer Rhodes solo from Smith and a nasty bumping bassline from Muhammad, while Younge buoys the proceedings on tenor and soprano saxophones and Morehead brings the syncopation and funk. "What May Come" is a dramatic exercise in modal fusion with Smith's Rhodes framed by B-3, guitars, saxes, and synths, while Morehead keeps them anchored and moving simultaneously. In "A New Spring," Oden's wordless hovering, swooping vocals are framed by Mellotron, Rhodes piano, and bubbling, syncopated drums and bass.
So many of the composer/pianist's stylistic trademarks are on display that Lonnie Liston Smith JID017 may be the best series entry in capturing the most important, recognizable elements of the artist's influential core sound and showcasing them as quite relevant. It's a lovely, affirming album that is well worth seeking out.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo