I realise this may not be big news to those quicker on the uptake than I, but Jaimie Branch is a U.S.-based trumpet player (and latterly, vocalist), and ‘Fly or Die II: Dog Birds of Paradise’ is her second album for the so-flawlessly-hip-it’s-making-me-suspicious International Anthem label. Recorded on stage at London’s Total Refreshment Centre and Café Oto in late 2018 (why was I not there, what an absolute fool), the record is a fairly sombre and stripped back affair in comparison to the kaleidoscopic splendour favoured by some of Branch’s label-mates, finding her accompanied for the most part simply by a core trio of Lester St Louis (cello), Jason Ajemian (string bass) and Chad Taylor (drums).

Though she may also be lacking in Ellingtonian compositional heft, in terms of pure feel, I get a strong Mingus kick from Branch’s work. There’s certainly a lot of dark, empty space between her strident, combative horn crescendos and the churning, knotty low end provided by Ajemian and St Louis, which puts me in mind of the textures on the classic Mingus albums, but more importantly, her songs (and there are indeed some songs here) also seem driven by a similarly heady mixture of joyous exuberance and deep-rooted anger.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s centre-piece and obvious stand-out, ‘Prayer for Amerikkka’, a brooding yet adrenalised lament which finds Branch taking to the vocal mic, linguistic syntax crumbling slightly, as in all the best anger-choked outbursts, as she speaks in no uncertain terms of the “bunch of wide-eyed RACISTS” currently clogging up the pipes of her nation, as disorienting bursts of street chatter (live or over-dubbed?) are threaded through the track’s sparse undergrowth.

The track’s second half meanwhile brings forth a more lyrical verse section, which seems to take us into the POV of a young Central American migrant, crossing the border at dawn. Repeated several times until it becomes almost mantra-like, this short, sketchy narrative becomes increasingly ominous, gradually adding detail and building a gut-wrenching sense of tension, interspersed with coruscating blasts of Branch’s disjointed, mariachi-like horn riffs, and her repeated, urgent message - “this is a warning honey, they’re coming for you..”.

It’s pretty on-the-nose, no question about it, but if this isn’t an appropriate moment for musicians to take a stand and get it all out there, I’d like to know when the hell it will be. THIS is the record I felt myself needing throughout 2019, perhaps since I took in the similarly white-hot frustration of Obnox’s similarly themed ‘Templo Del Sonido’ Back in 2018, though typically, it’s taken me a good, long while to blunder my way toward it.

Branch hits many of the same notes once again on the closing ‘Love Song (for Assholes and Clowns)’ (how’s that for an ersatz Mingus song title, incidentally?), a kind of mutant noir torch song of disgust directed toward the malign and ignorant forces currently feeding the fire of human misery. In between these two spikes of rage however, there’s more to this record’s appeal than mere culture war chest-beating, as the more relaxed and explorative instrumental cuts in-between spread out deep and weird across the wax, still equally infused with the feeling of people grasping to try to pull the best out of the morass of rootless frustration, sensory confusion and eerily deferred physical hardship within which many of us now live, but… in a rather more measured fashion, I suppose.

The ‘Bird Dogs’ moniker and avian artwork is reflected in the trilling waves of vibes, flute and hand percussion which add a touch of psychedelic glimmer to the opening title track, whilst ‘Nuevo Roquero Estereo’ on side # 2 is particularly exceptional - eight plus minutes of sick, skittering hypnogogic groove over which what I assume to be some pretty hairy live electronic processing runs riot, doubling and tripling Branch’s riffs and pushing her signal through a hot mess of distortion and reverb, leaving eerie fog banks of noise cascading through the dark space deep in the mix.

For all its platitudes about universality and communication and realising potential and so on, the best of the new jazz stuff I’ve been getting into recently genuinely seems to function by taking a retooled, arts n’ crafts movement type approach to re-establishing vital human/music connections which have been severed across successive decades. By paring back the cosmic/head-noddin’ drift of her contemporaries however, Jaimie Branch seems to reveal some sharply honed socio-political blades beneath, hitting the scene from the best possible angle. More of this, and soon, please – I think we’re gonna need it.

Labels: album reviews, Jaimie Branch