With 2018's
Raising Our Voice, long-running crossover jazz outfit
Yellowjackets offer a sophisticated, broadly stylistic collection of songs showcasing Grammy-winning Brazilian vocalist
Luciana Souza as a guest artist on seven of the 13 tracks. The second album the band has recorded since the departure of founding bassist
Jimmy Haslip,
Raising Our Voice introduces newest member
Dane Alderson on bass, taking over from
Felix Pastorius' seat, who left the fold after 2016's
Cohearance. As with that album,
Raising Our Voice finds
Yellowjackets exploring a harmonically nuanced bed of post-bop and fusion-influenced sounds that remain audience-accessible even as they reveal the members' talents for investigative soloing and improvisational interplay. In this department, saxophonist
Bob Mintzer excels, able to evince a deft balance between the probing modalism of
John Coltrane and the lyrical soulfulness of
Grover Washington, Jr. He pairs exceedingly well with singer
Souza, whose English, Portuguese, and wordless vocals add yet another layer of organic warmth to the band's sound. This is especially evident on the three legacy compositions the band reworked here to feature
Souza, including "Man Facing North" and "Solitude," both off 1992's
Like a River, as well as "Timeline" from 2011's
Yellowjackets. Also engaging is "Everyone Else Is Taken," in which pianist
Russell Ferrante's sprightly circular piano figure is doubled by
Souza and
Mintzer with a dancer's precision.
Ferrante then evokes the spirit of
Dave Brubeck with his delicate, impressionistic "Mutuality." Elsewhere, they draw upon their '70s roots with the fractured fusion of
Mintzer's "Ecuador" and dive headlong into the saxophonist's hard-swinging straight-ahead number "Strange Time." Bassist
Alderson also gets his own well-deserved spotlight turns, pushing the group toward new age with his long, drawn-out electric bass tones on the dewy rainforest soundscape of "Emerge" and contributing the kinetic math-rock-and-Latin-fusion hybrid "Brotherly." Ultimately,
Raising Our Voice has an openhearted international flavor that seems to speak to a kind of creative inclusiveness
Yellowjackets want to project into the world. ~ Matt Collar
