Search - Maroon :: Who The Sky Betrays

On their second CD, "Who the Sky Betrays," Brooklyn's MAROON gives the jazz tradition a jolt of contemporary pop music and politics. The result is a collection of sexy, intelligent songs fueled by hip-hop, rock, and jazz grooves, and laced with fiery lyrics and sophisticated jazz harmonies. The album, which features guitar hero Marc Ribot on five tracks, re-imagines familiar songs including Radiohead's "The Tourist," Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and Chrissie Hynde's "Show Me," in radically new ways. "We really respect the work of Cassandra Wilson and The Bad Plus, artists who are keeping jazz relevant," says the band's co-leader and singer Hillary Maroon. "We grew up with rock songs, so why shouldn't we play them? It's our music." Whatever MAROON plays, whether it's a rock cover, a jazz standard, or one of their original songs, they test the boundaries between contemporary popular music and modern jazz. Radiohead's "The Tourist" receives an emotionally exposed reading by singer Maroon, a canny combination of technical finesse and smoldering feeling over a tapestry of intimate acoustic piano and spacey guitar electronics. Chrissie Hynde's "Show Me" is simple and direct from the heart, but emotionally rich and elegantly arranged. The confrontational, hip-hop flavored original, "Bully on the Block," is a "straight-up protest song" written in reaction to Secretary of State Colin Powell's characterization of U.S. foreign policy. Another original, "Spun Me Shaky" dissects a failed relationship with unsentimental candor, while "Is This the Time?" weaves a tale of social paranoia and political fear. Their acoustic version of Victor Young's standard "When I Fall in Love" gives Tin Pan Alley a new twist with an! arrangement that sounds inspired by The Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s.