We’re down to just two sleeps away from the start of the annual New Orleans Jazz Festival, so if you’re beginning to look ahead for some music to hold you over between your Jazz Festival weekends (besides listening to any sets you may have missed or want to hear again on WWOZ’s two-week archive of performances the station is broadcasting live from the festival), you need look no further than the latest album from Jon Cleary and his band of Absolute Monster Gentlemen–releasing this Friday on Well Kept Secret to coincide with the festival–a little treasure entitled The Bywater Sessions.
We’ve previewed a couple of numbers off this one for you already, including the breakneck-paced lead track “So Damn Good” and a similarly high-energy “Uptown Downtown“, so we had no doubts that this album was going to be a good one. Add such gems as the slow, funky “Just Kissed My Baby”, a “Tipitina”-like “Fessa Longhair Boogaloo” that features some of the best piano playing of the album, and the grooving closer “Unnecessarily Mercenary”, and you’ve got plenty of reasons already to pick this one up, with tracks like the swinging “Zulu Coconuts”, boogeying “Bin a Lil’ Minit” and bluesy, strolling “Lottie Mo” certainly not hurting either!
Cleary’s terrific as always on the ivories but also has got himself a, well, monster band with plenty of great horns and percussion to make for an album that’s as “Absolute”ly entertaining as any Jazz Fest set you’ll hear!
Laissez les bons temps rouler!