Kurt Elling - The Messenger

[felser]

I love Donald Byrd's "Tanya" (famously done on the Dexter Gordon gem 'One Flight Up'). So it's really cool that Kurt Elling wrote lyrics to it and did it on 'The Messenger'.

But what lyrics!?! Guess it goes to show how left-brained I am. Never would have thought of stanza after stanza along the lines of "Screaming across the open plains of nothingness comes everything that might have been, like great comets blasting through every dark sky" or "The dreaming was over. But Prophet-Man had put mind into motion: Tanya Jean was then, hereafter seen to be the queen of what we later called the scene in which a body haverim careen like on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel".

His own 'The Beauty of All Things' gets just as far out there: "Here's what I see in your eyes right now:

Ten thousand lives over many years like leaves on the vine of this morning's glory, The determination of years coming to fruition

In the ever-present now of your life, unfolding now in the flowering of days. The constellation of stars in the sky are like a fugue of light in velvet hands."

All that being said, the whole disc SOUNDS great musically. Kudos to Elling, Hobgood and company for a fascinating listen. Wholeheartedly recommended, even if not wholeheadedly comprehended!

Edited October 13, 2009 by felser

[BFrank]

That's easily his best album - and "Tanya Jean": excellent.

I had high hopes for him, but he's lost me over the past few years. Just not that interesting.

[Nate Dorward]

Yeah, I still like that album quite a bit (including the vocalese lyrics!), but something went wrong about halfway through This Time It's Love & I never regained interest. Kind of a shame. Has he done good work in recent years? (I had a similar experience with Patricia Barber, whom I rather liked near the start circa Modern Cool but lost track of once it seemed that Blue Note was pressuring her into doing more conventional jazz standards repertoire.)

I used to play that Gordon album endlessly on a cheap cassette I had when I was first listening to jazz, which is one reason I liked Elling's choice of cover. I think at the time I was just really floored by the sheer length of the tracks--I wasn't used to jazz albums with really extended performances (I guess I hadn't heard too many in-studio jam sessions at that point).

[marcello]

Wow!

Those are some pretty inane lyrics!

From the Jimmy Webb School.

Elling, and Barber in particular, suffer from extreme hubris.

Edited October 14, 2009 by marcello