The short version: absolutely bloody loved it
The slightly longer version:
Montalban Quintet – Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Transformative music, I think I’m going to call it. It’s a new phrase – new to me anyway, and that’s all that counts – but it’s something you’re familiar with already. It’s the blues, it’s Leonard Cohen, it’s Joy Division. It’s all the music that is ostensibly full of sorrow but which somehow fills your chest so that you feel it swelling, bursting with pride. And it’s right here in the heart of the Montalban Quintet’s version of Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
Perhaps confusingly, there are seven members of the Montalban Quintet. That’s to be expected though, as they’re not the first ensemble to bear that name. That would be a collection of five handrails in a stairwell in the University of California, San Diego. Hermelindo Montalban would play them like long, resonant strings, bowing away at them with a metal bar.
Now under most circumstances I’d really want to hear that. I’d feel like I was missing out. That’s just the sort of sound that I love getting lost in, the place where Alan Lamb and Charlegmagne Palestine intersect. But the thing is that the Montalban Quintet’s debut album is so good that I just don’t care. I’m happy with what I’ve got.
Look, do you get the significance of this? I’m happy with what I’ve got. This never happens.
The band play a really cinematic flavour of jazz. It’s very much of its time. This is one of the secrets of jazz that people don’t get. It’s not a music that carries its own history around with it, rather it’s created anew every time. For the Montalban Quintet, you can hear them reaching back through post-rock and into contemporary classical for their influences.
That’s never more clear than on their version of Gavin Bryars’ seminal Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. It’s a classic of 20th century minimalism, based around a tape loop of a derelict and broken old man singing the title phrase. It sounds to me as if the Montalban Quintet have tightened up that loop – it doesn’t have all of the hesitancy in it that I remember. But the remarkable thing is that in doing so, they’ve made it swing. Not just that, but the tone of Chris Prescott’s trumpet is so pure and warm that the whole song becomes infused with a liquid joy. The most sorrowful of all songs has become exultant. Don’t miss this.
Doklands Daily Music Blog
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