Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Album Review: Evil Eye - Doin' It All For My Baby

Evil Eye
Doin' It All For My Baby
**and1/2 out of *****
A jazz quartet from Brookyln, NY Evil Eye deliver some free form jazz on Doin' It All For My Baby. Originally the disk was released in 2007, but it is out of print and the band just recently uploaded it to bandcamp.

The group, Jonathan Moritz- tenor sax, Nate Wooley- trumpet, Mike Pride- drums, vibraphone, percussion, Ken Filiano- bass flow along together exploring space and sound along with various textures and tempos. Opening with "Amhorikkka" is a frenetic opener, with pounding drums and skitter brass showing the band is willing to get after it from the beginning. This track has a punk rock feel with screeches and cymbal smashes while the following "There Certainly Are Not Great Writers" cools things almost to a crawl. These drastic shifts song to song make Doin' It All For My Baby an interesting but never an easy ride. 

On "Moore For Mom" the group catches an easy groove before Wooley's Trumpet disintegrates and stops the flow dead. Mortiz sax takes things up and things start progressing again until almost nine minutes of engaging jazz travel. "Mend More Ills" plays with lots of empty space and feels sparse while closer "When We've All Rehearsed Out Separate Parts The Real Thing Will Happen" takes this a step closer and just deals with minimalist drone. 

What initially grabbed us was the cool album art, a hippo USA? Sign RtBE up, and while the hippo was created by Elodie Blanchard, the music made by the Brooklyn foursome was worth the adventurous ride, even without the obvious Huey Lewis Jazz cover.  
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