Gone Just Like a Train
Bill Frisell is a soulful jazz minimalist with a sophisticated sense of harmony, a daring rhythmic approach, and an instantly recognizable, personal sound--part jazz, part rockabilly, part blues, part psychedelia--a remarkable melodist who can transmute single notes into sapphire tears. Yet while his fellow improvisors have pursued more and more complex forms, Frisell seems to be reaching back to the simplest folk forms to animate his post-modernist's view of Americana, andGone, Just Like a Trainis a cultural whistle-stop that conveys his land's epic rhythmic dynamism, regional diversity, and backwaters of mystery and quiet wonder. It's as if the Modern Jazz Quartet interpolated Cream, and together with his remarkable collaborators, bassist Viktor Krauss and drummer Jim Keltner, the Bill Frisell Trio successfully plumbs a variety of expressive forms within the raging seas of intellectual complexity that have traditionally defined the domain of modern jazzman.--Chip Stern