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Under Gates’ spell, jazz is sedate, spacious, and sexy stuff. |
Rebecca
Gates With Ruby Series, main Spinane Rebecca Gates reappears after three years, drops the name, and makes a hard yet graceful turn from her previous arty-indie-pop. Maybe it’s the years adding up, but more likely it’s her second home of Chicago that’s turned her onto jazz. Yes, jazz: though under Gates’ spell, it’s sedate, spacious, and sexy stuff. Teamed again with the golden multi-instrumentalist John McEntire (who engineered The Spinanes last album, Arches and Isles) as well as drummer Brian Deck (who, along with McEntire, was in the Sea and Cake and Tortoise), bassist Noel Kupersmith and brief appearances by keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, Gates has sculpted seven tracks in intimate, delicate beauty with suave jazz at their foundations. A sauntering piano line opens "The Seldom Scene" before Gates’ warmed-honey voice slides in, and the piano starts to twinkle. Stand-up bass appears here and there, as do a sleepy vibraphone and lazy, snare-heavy drums. Gates’ weighted whispers seem to weave their way around the cocktail-club arrangements, filling up most of the crevasses and open spaces left. Her swimming intonation suits the form well, and though she seems restrained at times, her softer voice still manages to lay a warm hand upon the heart like no one else. Ruby Series is not, truly, a jazz album. The lovely space age lullaby "Lure and Cast" is formed almost wholly of electronic loops. "Move," with it’s built-in fuzz, is traditional, no-beat sadcore, and "Doos," filled with dizzying throbbing and acoustic guitar breaks, is another case of Gates’ beautifully bruised pop. But even the sophisticated rave base of "In a Star Orbit," and "The Colonel’s Circle," with its beefy, buoyant bass and light guitar strokes, have at their hearts the type of musical interplay and individuation which is fundamentally found in jazz. Maybe this is what smart pop sounds like when it gets a bit of aching in its bones, and we’d be well advised to listen up for progress reports.–Scott D. Lewis |
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