Chris Speed's Yeah No - 11/02/2004, Bruges

Chris Speed - ts, cl
Cuong Vu - tp (or cornet?)
Ted Reichman - accordion
Skulli Sverrinsson - el b
Jim Black - d

I swear I've been to De Werf before, but that didn't stop me from first missing a turn-off (I was listening to the radio news a little too closely) and later getting a little lost in Bruges. I got to the club, eventually, about an hour after the announced starting time, but I still managed to catch the last two songs of the first set.

I'd already seen or heard each of the five musicians in other contexts: Reichman and Speed in John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet; Speed, Sverrinson, Black and Speed in Black's Alas No Axis and again in Pachora; Black in Ellery Eskelin's trio; Cuong Vu with his own trio. Familiarity had also sparked my curiosity, as those bands all sound very different from each other, and Yeah No sounds different from all of them.

The part of the concert I heard focussed more on composition than improvisation. The first song they played for me developed from slow long tones to a very long unisson theme over a driving back-beat-with-brushes and contained no improvisation at all. The second piece started with a short, abstract bass intro, then the band burst into an unexpectedly pretty, sunny and hopeful theme, during which it was often difficult to distinguish saxophone, trumpet and accordion from each other. Speed then took a very deliberate and calculated solo that began to illustrate why I am ill-at-ease with this music: no doubt this reflects Speed's personality, but his compositions all seemed very concerned with the formal at the expense of content. By this, I don't mean that his music is particularly difficult (I'm not a musician, so I can't be sure, but a lot of it seemed to be built on fairly simple elements) or bereft of melody (Speed can write very pretty lines). Rather, I never got a sense of a message or an emotion being strongly conveyed. When what vaguely sounds like an Irish folk tune melts into a static morass, I can't muster more than an "Oh, that's interesting." Even Jim Black's boyish enthusiasm (he's so into everything he does, he makes shaking a tambourine seem like the ultimate in human achievement) came across as a bit empty. This is perhaps because outside Eskelin's fantastic trio, his playing seems much less subtle and much more boringly rock-oriented. Cuong Vu was the happy, and surprising, exception to this feeling.

Vu came only with his trumpet, whereas in his trio he also had effect pedals and a laptop, and played overtly sentimental, fleet, breathy lines with a clear narrative arc. More importantly, he had a true, full-bodied presence and seemed to be expressing something beyond form. Unfortunately, all solos were rather short, but during the second set, Vu provided a highlight when Black's hyperactive drumming created great friction between the lyrical on one side and the frenetic on the other.

The last song of the second set strongly recalled Pachora's Middle Eastern flavour (Astereotypical (Winter & Winter, 2003) is an excellent record, almost a party album) and grooved fabulously, thanks to a 3 over 2 rhythm pounded out by bass and drums. The encore consisted in a song whose wistfulness was enhanced by the loose trumpet-tenor unisson.

Speed declared that he had recieved the band's latest (fourth) album that very afternoon. I debated internally whether to buy it (or another one of their albums), but decided that, while it may make a decent concert, I'd never listen to it at home much because I don't really feel able to bond with the music I heard tonight. It's often pretty and sometimes clever, but too rarely really involving.