Last summer, I was sitting in a lopsided wooden rocking chair on the porch of my best friend's country house. It was a quiet midnight, yet through a splintered window, I heard for the first time the initial broken jazz pulse, the elegant pentatonic guitar chords and the genre-blending prowess of The Slip. As their 1997 debut release, From The Gecko, evolved through skillful jazz instrumentals, highly concentrated funk and anything from perfectly executed folk to polyrhythmic African influences, never once did any song beg for more. When the album did finish, the inspired crickets took up the guitar tones and my foot kept the rhythm in check. These guys were good. Really good.
The Slip - brothers, Andrew (percussion) and Brad Barr (guitar), along with Marc Friedman (bass) - heard the road beckoning early in their careers. Thank God they didn't resist - the trio has blown jazz heads and others away with superb live shows and three impressively innovative albums. In the newest release, Angels Come on Time (2002), songs range from instrumentals like prog rock turned jazz-on-crack "Get Me With Fuji" to the deliberate storytelling of "The Nashua Rose."
So you want some advice? Listen to The Slip's three albums scoff at every musical cliche in their way, as they bend and fashion inventive tactics that'll stimulate your ears.
- Scott Hechinger
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