Wait: Speak collapses several traditions stretching from Canterbury to Bristol via New York into a very tasty pudding.
The first solo album by Saul Freeman, quite a few years after the break-up of his trip hop duo Mandalay, Wait: Speak opens up wide and Manhattanly on its first two tracks, “It Ain’t Over…” and “Intention And,” the latter sporting certain distinct family resemblances to Pat Metheny playing Steve Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint,” both gifted with good rhythmic bones and a sprightly, sanguine sound. Sun lower in the sky now, the more somber “I Watched a Church” portrays the event as if soundtracking the thoughts of Monet as he did so in Rouen about one hundred and twenty years ago.
“Left to Rise” is an all-too-brief Maypole dance of many plucked strings on a green English common that is succeeded by the softly gamelan paced “Instructions for Burning a Body,” a love-lost song right out of English folk-rock history, lyrics written and sung by guest Michael Eden in a kind of plummier Richard Thompson voice. Sad and sincere and very sweet.
“Remains of Trees” is a tinny scrubland through which an electric guitar courses in surges. After an eerier, serrated metallic experience in “We Went Back,” Freeman warms the tone substantially with the piano and wordless vocals of “Moor Song,” joined seamlessly halfway through by programmed beats, satisfying and musty as chestnuts roasting. Robots dance stiffly on “68 Books” before being decorously ushered out by a massing of strings.
Perhaps the record goes on a tad too long after that, as Freeman uses his last few tracks to experiment, mainly with piano and trumpet, which leaves the listener feeling a sense of imbalance. But up to that point, Wait: Speak collapses several traditions stretching from Canterbury to Bristol via New York into a very tasty pudding.
Wait: Speak is available on Vent Sounds.
