Scottish composer and pianist Bill Wells collaborates for the first time with Japanese group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, led by Tori Kudo. Wells shares his unadorned pop sensibilities with Kudo’s scruffy ensemble for a slightly off-kilter yet frequently sunny album.
Many of the songs could have been themes for old sit-coms with their lackadaisically simple and optimistic melodic statements that evoke a mostly contented nostalgia. Yet a lot of their finer details are blurred by the wheezing horns of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. There are times when the group sounds like a high school marching band practicing for a big performance, which makes for some purposefully awkward moments. Sometimes slow to the beat and out of tune, it’s these imperfections that give the compositions their unique flavor.
Most of the songs are instrumentals, but not all. Kudo’s wife Reiko sings on “On the Beach Boys Bus” and “Time Takes Me So Back,” the melodies of which both came to Wells in dreams. Her voice is frail and light, lending the songs a tender, melancholic quality. Reiko does get a chance to lighten things up on “Cowtail Calypso,” dispelling some of the sadness before revisiting it in “On the Beach Boys Bus (Reprise),” which closes the album.
This disc does suffer a little from a sameness in approach on many of the songs, and the nostalgic elements are consistent reminders of a similar pop era, but the shortness of the tracks keeps them from wearing out their welcome. The collaborators prefer gauze to precision, and brevity to repetition. This combination produces an album that’s both familiar and surreal, and while not terribly long, still manages to make an impression on the psyche.
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