Chicago cornetist, multi-instrumentalist, and all-around musical mad scientist
Ben LaMar Gay continues to push the edges of his genre-defying sound on 2021's surrealistically ambitious
Open Arms to Open Us. The album follows several years of
Gay's already boundary-pushing work with artists like
Makaya McCraven and
Nicole Mitchell, as well as his own albums like 2018's equally expansive
Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun. Loosely triangulating the kinetic post-rock of
Tortoise, the cross-pollinated pop experimentalism of
David Byrne, and the globally minded avant-garde jazz of
Don Cherry,
Gay has crafted an album with the giddy, disorienting quality of a
David Lynch film. That might lead you to think
Open Arms to Open Us will confound your ears; on the contrary,
Gay pulls you deeper into his Lynchian dreamscapes, contrasting his wildly inventive genre-clashing with soulful hooks and infectious Krautrock grooves. It's a vibe that's especially redolent on the bubbly, evocatively titled "Bang Melodically Bang" in which
Gay croons in a serpentine stream of consciousness against a swirling stew of jazzy bass, drums, and electronic bleeps. Yet more vibrant stylistic mash-ups arrive throughout the album as
Gay brings on board a slew of guest performers, including pairing with Chicago indie duo
Ohmme for the spiraling prog-R&B number "Sometimes I Forget How Summer Looks on You" and British-Rwandan singer
Dorothee Munyaneza on the poignantly dissonant African folk song-meets-
Steve Reich composition "Nyuzura." We also get equally potent collaborations with vocalist
Ayanna Woods, cellist
Tomeka Reid, singer/performance artist
Onye Ozuzu, and others.
Gay more than succeeds in weaving all of these seemingly disparate sounds together, and
Open Arms to Open Us has the engaging feeling of walking through a kaleidoscopic multimedia art installation. ~ Matt Collar