(Reprinted from the January 2021 issue of Downbeat magazine)
On This Land, The Westerlies’ fourth self-produced album, the impeccably calibrated brass quartet continues to stretch our understanding of musical inventiveness. This time, the four instrumentalists (trumpeters Riley Mulherkar and Chloe Rowlands, trombonists Andy Clausen and Willem de Koch) join forces with vocalist Theo Bleckmann on a program that alternates between stirring protest songs and their soothing palliatives.
The arrangements themselves, however, depart from typical song forms signaling rebelliousness and refuge. Bleckmann transforms Joni Mitchell’s “The Fiddle and the Drum” from a folksy ballad into a harmonically refined duet between voice and horns, and his ominous twist on “Look for the Union Label” alludes to the labor disenfranchisement that belied the chirpiness of the original 1970s jingle. Then, in seguing from the latter into an ambient, dissonant rendition of the spiritual, “Wade in the Water,” the group limns a disturbing correlation between historic enslavement and persistent social disparities.
In their originals, the group’s messages are no less pointed. On “Land,” Clausen presses for a reckoning of historical wrongs through rhythmic insistence and an accelerating tempo. Similarly, on “Looking Out,” Mulherkar’s rueful theme, melodic allusions, and spoken word section recall the civil rights violations of Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. And Bleckmann, on his tour de force “Another Holiday,” uses repetitious phrasing and contrapuntal horn lines to create a sense of the outsider’s unbearable longing for inclusion.
In and around these weighty compositions, however, the quartet revels in sparkling instrumental renditions of Woody Guthrie tunes like “The Jolly Banker” and “Tear the Fascists Down.” Rousing and majestic, these brief interludes (less than a minute each) hint at the exhilaration found in the righteous struggle. But the closing track, “Thoughts and Prayers,” asserts the album’s position most explicitly: “It is time to be the change,” Bleckmann sings. DB