Jackson Harrison Trio
Land Tides
(Hatology)
Australia is better-known for rock than it is for jazz, but Jackson Harrison might change that. The spirit of Bill Evans and Paul Bley runs through the young Aussie’s compositions like two streams coming together to form a raging river. The Jackson Harrison Trio paints pictures of astonishing abstract art on its debut disc Land Tides, splashing fiery colors onto backgrounds that are often stark but always stunning.
If there is an Australian parallel to Harrison’s music, it would be the early films of Peter Weir, who made the Outback both beautiful and alluring, even in the face of its inherent danger. There’s a wild beauty to the disc that amplifies the trio’s off-kilter approach. Natural process is a big subject with Harrison, as heard on the mercurial title track and the heartbreaking “Music To Forget.” The former track is immersed in the ebb and flow of nature, and of life; the latter is a sober example of the grieving process, as Harrison shows that the past needs to be relived in order to get beyond it.
“Haven” drops into this hollow, lonely place where nothing seems bright. Harrison deftly explores that loneliness while Dan Weiss’ cymbals move the piece forward and Thomas Morgan’s bass offers bare-bones counterpoint. “Kinski” is powerful, jarring, complex and chaotic—everything you’d want in a study of the volatile actor whose fiery eyes burned right into the soul. It takes a cohesive unit to pull off a poem like this, and the Harrison Trio keeps the portrait real while keeping the piece on the tracks. With that cohesion is a fierce sense of mission and focus, which as strong on the pastoral “Dreamed Landscape” as it is on the multi-shaded waltz “Rivers and Oceans” and the ripping romp “Strafe.”
Read the full review on the All About Jazz website.
