Charles Lloyd

• DIGIPACK EDITION

Charles Lloyd’s second album for Blue Note features the ascetically passionate sax star and his rhythm section hosting Bill Frisell and his pedal-steel partner Greg Leisz on a programme of folk songs, three Lloyd originals, and guest appearances by Norah Jones and Willie Nelson. Explicit jazz is rare (though the whimsically playful flute/guitar theme of Lloyd’s Ornette-like Of Course of Course is a highlight), but quiet instrumental conversations like the Frisell favourite Shenandoah, a lovely All My Trials and a succinct Abide With Me are spellbinding in their awestruck sax exhortations and gleaming guitar harmonies. Dylan’s Masters of War is a little on-the-nose as a Coltranesque lament, but while Nelson delivers the anti-war song Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream in a candid tremor and Norah Jones sings You Are So Beautiful in a note-bending trance, it’s the long, closing meditation Barche Lamsel that captures the core group at its most reciprocally poetic. Lloyd and Frisell sound like lifelong soulmates

PERSONNEL:

• CHARLES LLOYD, tenor sax, alto flute
• BILL FRISELL, guitar
• REUBEN ROGERS, bass
• ERIC HARLAND, drums
• GREG LEISZ, stell guitar
• WILLIE NELSON, vocal, guitar on track 7
• NORAH JONES, vocals on track 9

Santa Barbara, California, April 17 & 28, 2015

TRACKS:

• 01. Masters Of War
• 02. Of Course, Of Course
• 03. La Llorona
• 04. Shenandoah
• 05. Sombrero Sam
• 06. All My Trials
• 07. Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
• 08. Abide With Me
• 09. You Are So Beautiful
• 10. Barche Lamsel