To jam or not to jam? that is the question. Not so long ago, it would have been a total no-no for people like Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), Stephen Perkins (Porno for Pyros) and Mike Watt (fIREHOSE) to convene for a spot of free-form improvising. But now, certain members of the Alterna-palooza Generation have grown up to become actual musicians – guys who, like Trey Anastasio of Phish, want to venture beyond the three-chord riffs and 4/4 beats they've been playing for most of their lives.
Your first thought when listening to these very different instrumental albums is that you've time-traveled back to the dawn of progressive-jazz rock, circa 1970. Both Tuatara
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(Buck, Martin, Luna's Justin Harwood and Skerik of Critters Buggin) and Banyan (Perkins, Watt, Nels Cline and Beastie Boys keyboardist Money Mark) sound like lank-haired London Polytechnic students from the dark ages of prog rather than the musicscene luminaries of Seattle and Los Angeles that they are. Banyan, in particular, have an obvious white-boy jones for Miles Davis'
Bitches Brew and
On the Corner bands, not to mention a fondness for the mangled virtuosities of Frank Zappa.
Tuatara's is the more arranged and thoughtful album. Symptomatic of Seattle's new role as a hive of hybridization, the new ensemble is primarily the brainchild of drummer Martin and bassist Harwood. Far more so than Banyan, Breaking the Ethers is a soup of world-beat influences, giving Martin the chance to hammer the crap out of every conceivable piece of percussion known to man (steel drums, marimba, gongs, tabla, Bullroarer, the "Taos Thunder Drum") and allowing his colleagues to have big fun, mostly with acoustic instruments like dulcimers and didgeridoos. If all this sounds a little ethnomusicological, well, it is. But tracks like "Dark State of Mind" are delicious: the Brian Wilson of Pet Sounds metamorphosing into the Frank Zappa of Hot Rats, with bowed bass and cello, and a clutch of saxophones blurting over the deep vibes and marimba. Elsewhere the moods are more North African ("The Desert Sky"), Pakistani ("Eastern Star"), jazzy ("Smoke Rings") or just plain funky ("The Getaway") – in other words, around the world in 11 jam sessions, starring Martin as a post-grunge Mickey Hart.
Banyan are less precious about what they do. Holing up chez les Dust Brothers in boho Silverlake, Calif., this L.A. quartet of sonic miscreants appears to be into jamming for its own sake. Despite intermittent exotic touches in "What's Left of Autumn" (marimba) and "People Find It Hard" (steel drums), much of Banyan sounds like grungy atonal funk with liberal sprinklings of heavy free jazz. Guitarist Cline is the star here, a six-string armchair terrorist spraying wah-wah licks over Money Mark's cheesy organ doodling, Watt's rumbling bass and Perkins' propulsive drumming. But it's not enough to save the album from being a
