Review by Des Cowley.
Steve Barry – In the Waves (Earshift Music, EAR078, CD & digital release)
New Zealand-born pianist Steve Barry has been a strong presence on the Sydney scene since releasing his self-titled debut in 2012. In the Waves sees him team up with fellow New Zealander, bassist Thomas Botting, alongside two international heavy-weights: drummer Eric Harland, who has graced albums by Charles Lloyd, McCoy Tyner, Dave Holland, and others; and acclaimed saxophonist Will Vinson. Together, the quartet romps its way through eight compositions, all penned by Barry, totalling nearly seventy-minutes of engrossing music. In these times, when we increasingly see 35-minute albums geared to vinyl, this adds up to a generous and welcome offering.
Barry describes playing with Eric Harland as “like riding the crest of a wave”, and certainly the drummer, from the outset, chimes in with a continuous array of dynamic rhythms, dancing behind Vinson’s incandescent flights, his stick-work furnishing fast-clipped tempos, and forward momentum. On opener ‘Lithospheric’, Barry unfurls a finely-tuned vamp, opening the space for Vinson’s angular alto sax, the pair exhibiting a symbiotic affinity that recalls the close-knit alliance of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. With many tracks hitting the ten-minute-mark, there is plenty of room for the players to stretch out, develop ideas, push the compositions in novel directions.
‘Half-Moon Lights’ slows the pace, serving up a gentle ballad that spotlights Vinson’s ravishing tone. ‘Thixotropy’ sees Barry ushering in a sparse piano motif, over which Vinson’s soprano sax lays down a series of spikey runs, anchored by Botting’s toe-tapping bass lines. The title track begins with a sturdy bass riff, dispensed over Harland’s frantic swarm of choppy percussion. When Barry enters, he responds with a deep and consistent groove, providing a strong propulsive charge, egging-on Vinson, whose sax roams freely, hovering and glistening above the melody-line.
Barry’s pieces have an open-ended, loose-feel about them, expansive at heart, leaving ample latitude for prolonged excursions. Barry concedes this music was hatched in lockdown, inspired by his re-connection to ocean-swimming, and it’s certainly possible to discern a marked water/ocean theme running through the album, a sense of current, drift, of coursing movement. British-born Vinson, a player who generated real waves on the New York scene when he re-located there in 1999, is a fiery presence from start to finish; while Barry exhibits an uncommon agility, a capacity for fleet-footed and deft grooves, played out over Botting’s solid base and Harland’s consistently inventive drumming.
Barry’s previous album was a stirring session that mined the sound of the organ trio – think Big John Patton, Jimmy Smith – testifying to his eclectic and wide-ranging approach, where nothing is off the table. In the Waves returns him to state-of-the-art acoustic jazz, performed at the highest level, full of complex time signatures, tightly-meshed passages, and bravura soloing. Barry’s compositional prowess is on full display, combined with his skills as a leader, guiding his quartet through an hour-plus workout. It’s the sound of a band fully engaged, relentlessly listening and responding to one another, feeding on shared energy, seeking and finding a common language.