Never Enough Hope
The Gift Economy
If I may digress right out of the gate – I think 20-piece ensemble Never Enough Hope should play a festival show with the Polyphonic Spree, Akron Family, and Dark Meat, in an attempt to create a well-attended show where the performers still outnumbered the audience. Improviser/composer Tobin Summerfield put together this group in Chicago as some sort of jazz/post-rock/freestyle/big band super group, and the result was The Gift Economy.
The sounds here loosely fall in the experimental jazz camp, and while mention of the genre usually evokes a sense of dread in me, this stuff is rather enjoyable. Lead cut “The Banner” gives us hypnotic rhythms, layers of strings and horns that poke their heads in and out, and near the end it rocks out well enough to push the idea of regular “modern jazz” out the window. “Des Moines” feels like it’s moving, but evidently it takes you nowhere – a musical traffic circle perhaps? “Two Ghosts At The Table” however rolls along pretty smoothly. The ghosts are seated doing their ghostly thing, and over the duration of the 7 minute song, the sounds flow from Casper to Poltergeist. The foundation of “Grant Park” starts off with a funky bassline, then juts into a horn workout, and then over to another trance-like guitar hook. It’s like a baton being passed at a relay race. “The Light Tilts Out” may very well be the most boisterous song here, almost overloaded with instrumental chaos, but oddly the disc ends with a wonderful traditional pop song (with vocals even!) that’s almost nail-biting the first time through, as the listener wonders “When is the music going to start freaking out? Now? …Now?” I held my breath at a few spots but it never came.
It’s interesting to note that there are at least two of everything in Never Enough Hope – violin, trumpet, sax, guitar, even two drum sets and vibraphones! The Noah’s Ark of free music! The Gift Economy sounds expertly orchestrated, but at the same time there’s always another trumpet near by to burst out freely, a sax bleat to punctuate the jam, or some extra percussion to bash away while the rhythm holds on tight. It’s this blend of calculated vs. pell mell that make the album unique. Elevator muzak this ain’t.
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