This review appears in the March 2011 issue of The New York City Jazz Record:
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Gerald Cleaver’s Uncle June
Be It As I See It (Fresh Sound New Talent)
By David R. Adler
It’s scarcely an exaggeration to say that drummer Gerald Cleaver can play everything: from the down-the-middle postbop of Jeremy Pelt to the free-blowing fury of Charles Gayle, to the pellucid soundscapes of Miroslav Vitous and more. Cleaver is an artist belonging to no camp, and this explains much about the stunning individuality of Be It As I See It, his third Fresh Sound release.
“To Love,” with its pumping rock beat and anarchic tonal mishmash (Cleaver shouts the song title out loud at various points), sounds virtually nothing like the remainder of the album — quite a stark choice for an opener. Following this, “Charles Street Sunrise” is already a world away, with a dark, dissonant mood and slow-moving legato tones from Andrew Bishop’s flute and Drew Gress’s arco bass. Oddly, the piece slips into a clear tempo toward the end but then quickly fades out. Later in the program, “Charles Street Quotidian” picks up the thread, as the same motive from the fadeout blossoms into a full piece. The continuity is striking, and Cleaver strengthens this narrative aspect of the music with an extended suite called “Fence & Post,” which stretches to fill nearly half the album.
Craig Taborn’s brilliant acoustic piano flights (“Gremmy,” “22 Minutes”) and alien keyboard and organ murmurings (“The Lights,” “Statues / Umbra”) loom large. So do the individual solo voices and sectional counterpoint of Mat Maneri on viola, Tony Malaby on tenor and soprano and Andrew Bishop on multi-reeds. These are loyal allies of Cleaver’s: Taborn, Maneri and Bishop appeared on the drummer’s 2001 debut Adjust; Bishop returned for Gerald Cleaver’s Detroit in 2008; and Cleaver’s co-led trio projects with Lotte Anker (saxophone) and William Parker (bass) both feature Taborn in the piano chair.
Beyond this strongly unified core of a band, Cleaver tosses in wild-card elements like the noisy guitar of Ryan Macstaller, spicy banjo from Andy Taub (who engineered and mixed the album), and the left-field vocals of Jean Carla Rodea and John Cleaver (the leader’s father, also a drummer). The disparate streams feed into a surging river, a music full of nerve and murky beauty.
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