Jessica Williams - Touch - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

As the third in Max Jazz's popular piano series, This Side Up finds Ms. Williams paying tribute in the intimate piano trio setting. - All About Jazz

Jessica Williams newest album more than lives up to it's proud title with 8 originals by Jessica Williams and one seldom-heard chestnut by Sonny Rollins. The music is as new as the 21st Century and quite unlike anything Ms Williams has committed to CD before In a program that spans all of the emotions, from longing, sadness, wonder and optimism, to melting love. Still firmly rooted in her nearly 50 year love-affair with jazz, she offers her deeply-felt tribute to the memory of the great pianist Oscar Peterson, and rounds out the mesmerizing program with her original compositions containing soaring lines and John Coltrane inspired rapid-fire sheets-of-sound.

Nation of Language's first two albums, Introduction, Presence (2020), and A Way Forward (2021), came as pandemic godsends gorgeous, relatable soundtracks to our collective doldrums. But it was their last LP, Strange Disciple (2023), that catapulted the group from cultural standouts to critical darlings, with the album being named Rough Trade's Album of the Year. With that , Pitchfork wrote that the band Inchare learning what it means to get bigger and better.Inch This is Devaney's calling soulfully translating individual despair into a comforting, collective mourning. The single InchNow That You're Gone,Inch which radiates and reverberates with a devastating wistfulness, was inspired by witnessing his godfather's tragic death from ALS, and his parents' role as caretakers for this ailing friend. At it's heart, the song is a reflection of how friends can be there for each other, and also highlights a theme throughout the record the pain and lost promise of friendships that fall apart. On Dance Called Memory, the band once again collaborated with friend and Strange Disciple producer Nick Millhiser (LCD Soundsystem, Holy Ghost!). InchWhat's so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don't need to do what might be expected of us,Inch says synth player Aidan Noell, who, along with bassist Alex MacKay, rounds out the Nation of Language lineup. They imbued Dance Called Memory with a shifted palette - sampling chopped-up drum breaks on InchI'm Not Ready for the ChangeInch for a touch of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine, or smashing all of the percussion of InchIn Another LifeInch through a synthesizer to cast a shade of early-2000s electronic music. Ultimately, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. InchThere is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I've