Kate Olson
So It Goes
(OA2)
Saxophonist/composer Kate Olson has excelled in Seattle’s jazz and experimental scenes for about 15 years as a solo artist, bandleader, and member of Syrinx Effect, Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, and Battlestar Kalakala. She’s especially shown an affinity for minimalist works that exhibit a deep spirituality, à la Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, and Don Cherry. Olson’s last album, 2020’s Homeland, pushed her into new territory: funereal post-rock, industrial music recalling the Bug’s iciest and most ominous moments, and discombobulating IDM.
Olson returns to jazz on her new LP, So It Goes, joined by Conner Eisenmenger (trombone, trumpet), Tim Carey (electric bass, electric guitar), and Evan Woodle (drums, percussion). With Olson playing soprano sax, the album zips out of the gate with “Bumbling Thumbs Blues,” bustling bebop full of thrilling dynamics, with Woodle devoting acute attention to the tom-toms. Which makes the transition to the sly “Take Five” homage of “ShouldaCoulda” a brilliant change of pace. Olson finesses a quietly ecstatic and rococo solo in this utterly beguiling and introspective tune. The burrowing, mesmerizing bebop sorcery of “All Pear-Shaped” continues So It Goes’s hot streak.
But Olson also excels at cooler temperatures; her ballad game is strong. “Nominally Challenged” is beautiful, serpentine jazz for late nights or early mornings, while “Pink Mountain”—a delicate, bittersweet ballad—displays Olson’s playing at its most tender. Dedicated to Billy Pilgrim, protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, “So It Goes” is a languorous, melancholy ballad with scene stalwarts Wayne Horvitz on piano and Geoff Harper on double bass. And showing immaculate taste, Olson and company—with Horvitz and Harper again lending stellar support—do justice to the legend Alice Coltrane’s questing astral-jazz composition “Translinear Light,” the title track from her final studio album. Real recognize real.
Thomas Andrew Doyle
Twilight
(Incineration Ceremony)
It’s crazy that Thomas Andrew Doyle’s synth-based music from 2017 onward flies so far under the radar, even though it ranks among his best output. The man best known as the leader of Sub Pop grunge brutes TAD has undergone a radical transformation in this century, and maybe fans of that band and critics just can’t get their heads around this new and improved musician/composer.
These days, Doyle’s into creating soundtracks in search of film directors who revel in transporting viewers to profoundly disturbing places. Twilight is Doyle’s latest excursion into the vast bleak. The epic title track begins with a subdued, solemn organ drone poised between hope and distress, creating a paradoxical tension. Eventually, ceremonial male chants enter and lend a wafting gravitas to proceedings. It would sound infernally grand in a theater. “1 over 137” is a bass-heavy dirge of deep suspense, cut with fluid synth motifs that suggest an appreciation for Dune-loving keyboard sorcerer Bernard Szajner. On “Decimated,” Doyle coaxes out the interstellar eeriness of Brian Eno’s best ’80s ambient releases. The despairing drones of “Dormant Complexities” approximate the sound of E.M. Cioran’s brain waves as he was writing A Short History of Decay. Dedicated to Doyle’s late friend, and friend of the paper (and entire city), Bradley Sweek, Twilight epitomizes the art of darkness.
Seattle-area musicians can send music to NewSeattleMusic@thestranger.com for possible coverage.