Medeski, Martin and Wood: Radiolarians III

Have you seen the jazz/groove trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood in concert? Fans will tell you, it’s a fun, loose-limbed experience. “MMW” play long, rhythmic jams, and so fans of bands like Phish and the Grateful Dead crowd these jazz shows, creating a unique crossover scene. “Forget the albums, man — you gotta see a live show!”

And, right there, you can see how this “JAZZ” group can run into some trouble with the jazz crowd. With all that patchouli and free-form dancing and finger waving and meditative zoning out going on, well, it’s only fair to expect that the solos will meander, that the collective groove will mean more than individual expression or daring exploration, and that the surface pleasure of pop music will quickly dominate the music.

But that’s where John Medeski (keyboards), Chris Wood (bass, acoustic and electric), and Billy Martin (drums/percussion) come through like sunshine. No doubt, they scratch the groove itch: they are a satisfying jam-band, locking into an organic funk as messily and genuinely as any Parliament/Funkadelic incarnation. But better than that — and immensely better than that when you are talking about listening to one of their recordings — they write tunes worth hearing and play with the improvisatory invention of good jazz players.

Radiolarians III is the last in a series of three recordings that test this strength and prove it to be authentic. Jam-bands all make studio albums, of course, and then they take the tunes out of the road and transform them. MMW has done this too, laying down relatively sober versions of their tunes initially. The Radiolarians series (I and II were released in 2008 and earlier this year) reverses this procedure: the tunes were written, then toured on extensively, and then recorded at a later stage in their evolution. As a result, what you get here are the extended, sort-of live versions, not the outlines. The focus of the studio is in them, but the flexibility of a jam also insists on itself. A mediocre band would likely make a hash of this procedure.

MMW rise to and well above the occasion.

On Radiolarians III, as on the previous discs in the series, the trio moves flexibly and inventively between musical styles. “Chantes de Femmes” begins with a call-and-response pair of licks on the organ, set to a busy Latin groove, but when Medeski switches to piano, the drum groove shifts and the tune segues easily into a soul workout that might have come from Less McCann in 1968 — down home. But Medeski, an adventurous player, takes the groove out into wild places before settling it back down onto a slower/quieter two-chord vamp.

Mesdeski’s chops as a pianist are impressive and on display during the long introduction to “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down”, which rumbles through atonal avant-garde twirls, stride-piano bounces, and sections of classical elegance. The tune itself enters on the heels of a raggy piano groove, with Wood apparently playing a melody reminiscent of “This Train is Bound for Glory” on some kind of overdriven bass guitar. Fun!

On most of the tunes here, MMW revels in repeated figures that are then molded into song forms, placing them firmly into jazz’s riff-based traditions. “Wonton” starts with a repeated organ lick that is shifted and layered over a blues song form. Medeski plays like a snapped-up-to-date Jimmy Smith. “Jean’s Scene” uses a lick in the form of a Latin montuno, a repeated figure that locks in with the bass and drums to become, essentially, its own drum. Radiolarians III is packed with these soulful tracks, with this one developing into a hot collective solo that resolves back to the groove.

“Kota” is a change of pace, beginning as a ballad for piano and bowed bass, then shifting into a slow groove over which Medeski plays a keyboard sound that resembles some kind of South Asian stringed instrument. Wood keeps returning to the same bass note as Medeski powers up into surges of impressionism and dissonance on both acoustic piano and his other sound.

While there is a goodly amount of “jamming” on these tracks (presumably one purpose in recording the songs after touring them for a while), none of the tracks goes to or beyond ten minutes, with most settling in around 6:00. And many of the “songs” actually seem like carefully conceived compositions rather than mere vehicles for play. “Broken Mirror” has a hip, film-noir-ish vibe and a minor tinge, but it’s more than mood: a strong melody that stands well on both organ and piano with a contrasting bridge. When Medeski solos on organ, he follows the changes and uses the source material of the written song rather than leave it in his super-charged jammy trail.

The wonder of Medeski, Martin, and Wood is that they have managed to find popular success without courting it. Or, better put, they have adjusted to the attention of the jam-band crowd without using it as an excuse to eliminate from their art the difficult and daring. Listening to Radiolarians, you can hear the side of MMW’s art that endears them to the downtown jazz crowd: the dissonances and free flights of improvisation that are far-far from “smooth” or mainstream. Yet the spacey thrill of the jam and the heartbeat clarity of backbeat is plenty in evidence as well. To juggle with both these balls excitingly in the air is the band’s particular magic, and Radiolarians keeps these balls sailing like little else in the band’s impressive output.