Search - Either/Orchestra :: More Beautiful Than Death

The Either/Orchestra are a great neighborhood bar band--that is, if your neighborhood happens to be Cambridge, Massachusetts. This long-running collective became one of the more compelling jazz big bands--they're a big-sounding 10-piece outfit--in any current scene since the mid-1980s. E/O sports musicians who know how to trade solos and encircle each other with grace and precision. The first cut on More Beautiful Than Death, "Amiak Abet Abet," demonstrates they can either fly through turbulence at high altitude or hold steady at cruising speed with equal aerodynamic skill. The atmospherics on "Number Three" (actually the second tune) are almost progressive-rockish (think Soft Machine or the first album by Chicago, when they still aspired to jazzier sensibilities). Guest soloist Miguel Zenon's alto sax solo is sinewy stuff and cuts through the mist with well-focused acumen. The lengthy "More Beautiful Than Death" is pastoral, like Oliver Nelson (with an elegant piano break by Dan Kaufman). There's interesting baritone saxophone work on "Musicawi Silt" (courtesy of Russ Gershon, who actually heads this unit), which evolves into a nice exchange between reeds that brings to mind Frank Zappa's Hot Rats (undoubtedly a formative influence on these postfusion cats). "The Eighth Wonder," meanwhile, is a bluesy, almost Miles Davis-ish romp. There's a mariachi flavor to "Breaktime for Dougo" before it drifts into more of Kaufman's pianistics. If all this sounds a bit schizophrenic, rest assured: this album is surprisingly even throughout. --Joe S. Harrington