The first tones of this album give you the impression that The Way Blue Bucket don’t want you to take their music too seriously. The intro last 16 seconds and consists of laughter… The Way Blue Bucket is an experimental trio from Philadelphia. They have invented various creative descriptions for their music, like ‘Afroswedish tribal lounge with singalongs’. So, a group that is not easily categorized, and they probably like it that way. They create a nice clear sound with saxophones and clarinet, percussion and guitar. The compositions sound improvised, with rather free structures.
Now the sun is shining bright on a beautiful spring day and my balcony doors are wide open, I can rather appreciate this not-so-everyday but cheerful music. ‘Lifeboat’ offers us a hectic mix of saxophones and South-American rhythms, with some surprising breaks. A song like ‘Clown dance’ could be well used to accompany an old slapstick movie, with a few melancholic sequences and some fast action. Towards the end of the cd some of the compostions are getting more chaotic, I get the impression. Luckily there is the laid-back jazzy track ‘No Working Title’, which is almost suited to play during a distinguished dinner. Also nice and a bit folky is the short epilogue ‘Uti var hage’, apparently a Swedish traditional.
Jazz, funk, Cuban music, rock, avantgarde classical, put it all in an improvised blender and you get this exotic result. It would probably be a lot of fun to see this trio live.
