Helge Albin: Homemade

If the word "fussy" occasionally rears its head when relating the Helge Albin Quintet's newest release, it is not meant as a slight. Albin—an undeniable staple of the Swedish and wider North European jazz scene—is nothing if not insatiable. Before the quintet's founding, he led the impressive Tolvan Big Band, certainly Sweden's most ambitious musical project in recent memory, an 18-man ensemble almost entirely devoted to Albin's compositions. His record as a sideman is no less storied, working closely with artists across the jazz spectrum, just as adept in the freer tones of Dave Liebman than against the fusion artistry of Michael Brecker. He is an artist of many faces, and his sound reflects such constant movement and negotiation.

Homemade is a moody, urban post-bop lament—a series of squirmy, jilted epilogues to unwritten tragedies. Joined by saxophonist Karl-Martin Almqvist, Jacob Karlzon on piano, Johnny Åman on bass and Lennart Gruvstedt on the drums, the record oozes an ECM-tinged solemnity. The opener "Jeriko" twists and turns across Karlzon's unpredictable twittering, Albin's horn acting as some strange thunder or subterranean rumble, both austere and playful, plaintive, and frenetic—Alban's never got his story straight, or at least he's not an author who reveals his structure hastily. His sax, paired with Karlzon and Åman, has that off-kilter sentiment of early Thelonious Monk, that spark of mystery which leaves environs unfamiliar for both audience and performer.

"Wineglass" and "Easy Going" are straightforward routines, but "Pallet," "Looking Inside" and the title track returns the group's novelistic diversions and digressions. "Pallet" is dragged every which way, starting as a surprisingly danceable bop, then snaking into a slim sortie and finishing as some foreign geometric experiment. The band is always fixed on change, change like the quick slides on a Rubik's cube's façade—there's a cohesive vision by the end, but how we get to our finish is wild fits and starts, constant frustrated pulls into opposing states, so whether we reach the initial design is rendered irrelevant. "Looking Inside" returns to the soft melancholy of the first act, yet Karlzon and Gruvstedt, again, fidget restlessly with the material, alternating between noirish sorrow and a fanciful club lullaby. The piece once again switches face at around the 3-minute mark, when Albin lets loose and the lingering cold front is evaporated by a bleeding bluesy edge. Again, the quintet is fussy. Any detail, the smallest progression, can lead them on some distant tangent, never to return to its original subject, and in the hands of these viciously original performers, these miniatures duels and sudden veers off-track are essential.

The record enters a different, more classical mode in its final act, and while the Albin-penned "Lutoslawski No. 3" is efficiently performed and "Bright Colors" involves some more intricate work for Gruvstedt, much of the album's earlier zest is lost as the set mellows out. "Magic Fingers" is too caught in soul-inflected rhythms to sustain the noirish tendencies of the players, leaving the composition cookie-cutter compared to its peers. Still, Albin can flare the band's unending curiosity with the song's close and manages to lay down a few expert licks at the tail end.

What is exceptional about Homemade, and Albin's work in general, is its compulsive desire to tinker, to extrapolate and integrate, cut essential scenes, and elongate the more pedestrian ones, like a meaty 19th century novel comprised entirely of extraneous detail. As a quintet, the ethos is brought to the extreme, where passages expand and contract until they are virtually unrecognizable, even somewhat unpleasant, though never less important; they are a group of writers who, for better or worse will not let a story go untold.

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