On their second full-album collaborative, Phase II (GBM) the individually renowned brothers Gary and Greg Grainger play elastic, energetic funk highlighting rhythmic gymnastics. For listeners this means a lot of the good stuff: gleeful drums and percussion from Greg, and twisting bass work from Gary. The brothers make way for John Scofield on the jumping jazz of “Sco Sco Swing,” with a theme like a wicked twist on “Deck the Halls,” and highlight the crazed sax work of Gary Thomas on the knuckling, Latin-derived party tune “Phase II,” for example. Though there are overthought moments like the feathery, slow-paced ballad “Always Love,” with its grossly mannered vocal read, for the most part the Graingers play it straight, faring best in stripped down settings. Where “Coconut Essence” is a twisted tropical treat marked by bass stings and prickly guitar, “Get Up” has an old-soul, strutting cool, drawn in Gary’s souped-up bass line, Dan Reynolds’ energized piano work and Marshall Keys’ pointed, sly sax work.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time