SPOT ON, Jonathan Patrick! With the band featured on NPR this week this two-year-old review is getting new attention. (Link at bottom.)
This is music as smug self-congratulatory inside baseball. The idea that it's "important" jazz music (or any kind of important music) is totally fatuous.
Every song on the NPR program I heard, which is usually really good (Jazz Night in America) was mechanical and soulless...and these were live recordings! Sure it's all very tight but too tight, like a pair of shoes two sizes too small. Every song plodded along aimlessly, and the performances were mostly tiresome and antiseptic. The songs proceed like checklists and have all the energy of wilted flowers. There were no discernible melodies, they didn't swing, the beats were robotic as a metronome and when a groove finally got rolling it was too late. This sounds like something done far better by Paul Hardcastle twenty years ago. No wonder the club atmosphere gets more animated at that point once the band actually realizes that they need to show some kind of passion, because the audience is happy for any sign of life.
Based on the hype I was expecting Weather Report, 70s-era Donald Byrd -- something at the level of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" or the great CTI or Blue Note releases.
Great music begins with brilliant songcraft, touches the soul, makes you want to shout and move your feet, or just takes your mind to a place bigger than your situation. Dust off a track like "Something About John Coltrane" by Alice Coltrane with Pharoah Sanders. I can listen to that a hundred times and hear something different that's both complex and beautiful each time. It's not an anthropology lesson, it's an eternity lesson.
And of course this is where I'll be reminded that Snarky Puppy got another Grammy. Well with a completely open mind and hoping for something fantastic, I checked out their Grammy award-winning song with Lalah Hathaway. One word: HORRIBLE. I can't believe anyone actually listened to that song prior to voting. And all the videos I've seen show exactly what the reviewer describes -- a collective more involved with themselves than either the music or the audience. They're all so busy grinning and winking at each other, adjusting their headphones and gear, yet completely missing the point that their music is uninspiring glop. They look like engineers in an office building getting excited over the cover sheets for their TPS reports. Not exactly inspiring.
This is a band that claims to be about "music for the brain and booty." PUHLLLEASE. Those would be tracks like "Running Away" by Roy Ayers, "On the Corner (Take 4)" from Miles' box set, "Sun Goddess" by Ramsey Lewis, "The Payback" by James Brown, "Crosseyed and Painless" by Talking Heads or the Roots' spin on Bobby Hutcherson's "Montara." COME ON PEOPLE, that's great groove music. Snarky Puppy is jumping through all the milestones of official modern hypedom. God it's so obvious! There's nothing to see and even less to hear.
Jonathan Patrick you are so freakin' right about this band. There's more soul in my ROCK album collection for crying out loud. I can drop a needle on Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, Billy Squier, Bowie, The Who, dozens of power pop and modern rock records and hear magnificent songs and legendary performances by artists who left everything on the stage.
But these guys sound like they've never been through anything and they're not smart enough to take cues from artists who have. Do they want to prove they're really great? Let's hear them cover some of the great hard bop and fusion records of the past fifty years. Bring on Weather Report, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Stanley Turrentine, Wes Montgomery, Jackie McClean, Miles, Roy Ayers.
They may do that someday but they won't do it anytime soon, not because they're too good but because they're not good ENOUGH. Snarky Puppy is proof that great music isn't an academic exercise. Forget about "jazz" whatever it is. Jonathan Patrick is right. This stuff is boring as hell. As he puts it, "If any art, any music, no matter how affable or renowned its purveyors, doesn't break something loose, move those gears inside your soul that grasp at the meanings of heart and emotions and inspiration, then it's useless, a waste of your time."
http://www.dallasobserver.com/music/snarky-puppy-are-a-waste-of-your-time-7071522
