The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)
Neneh Cherry & The Thing
Released June 19, 2012
NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Best New Albums 2012
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https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lRbMzbV_WG86YPTXqykioCm82B9t-DjEg
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About:
The Thing took it’s name from a piece by Don Cherry: when they first got together it was to play his music. So it does make sense that they should eventually team up with Don Cherry’s daughter. Neneh Cherry and The Thing met for the first time at a recording session in London in the fall of 2010. It clicked right away as they all shared an open, free approach to the music. The high energy of The Thing’s playing found a fitting counterpart in Neneh’s intense style. After a performance at Strand, Stockholm in March 2011 it was decided to continue the collaboration. A CD will be released in March 2012 on Smalltown Supersound. Next summer The Cherry Thing will tour the European music festivals. Apart from their own compositions they will also play the music of such diverse artists as Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Velvet Underground singer Nico and hip hop artist MF doom. A born pioneer, Neneh Cherry fits naturally into the forefront of musical and social change, whether it’s post-punk, rap, or giving the music world a new image of female pop stars: famously, she promoted her breakthrough solo album Raw Like Sushi by getting down on British TV wearing a tight outfit – and seven months pregnant. Breakthroughs mark Cherry’s career, full of individual choices like collaborating with Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour on 7 Seconds which reached number 1 in 48 countries and was voted Song of the Century by the French public in 2000. Her next release, the torch song Woman, was sung in English and Spanish and consolidated Neneh’s respect as a conscious global role model for women and those that appreciate them. Sticking to your artistic guns is the code with which Neneh was raised. Her adaptive approach was molded growing up on the road with her Swedish artist mother Moki and her step-father, world/free jazz trumpet great Don Cherry. Summers were spent in the Swedish forests; with Don’s folks in Watts, L.A; the family loft in New York or with the family of her percussionist father, Amadu Jah, in Sierra Leone. Those formative influences and experiences prepared Neneh for a lifetime of creating with talents as different as they are authentic. Starting out by joining key punk girl band The Slits, Neneh next became the voice of renegade free-blowing post-punk bohoes Rip, Rig and Panic and their successor: Float Up, C.P. After attracting further attention with her vocals on The The’s classic Slow Train To Dawn, Neneh became part of ‘Buffalo’, the creative collective assembled by the late visionary visualizer Ray Petri, whose style so shaped the 1980s. Now a solo artist, Cherry hit big straight away with the worldwide hit singles Buffalo Stance, Manchild and Inna City Mamma from her debut album Raw Like Sushi. More followed, like Buddy X from the Homebrew & Man albums, which also featured Woman and 7 Seconds. After the Man album Neneh decided to step off the corporate music business tread mill preferring to collaborate with artists such as ‘Tricky’, ‘Damon Albarn’ on his ‘Gorillaz’ project & her own family collective ‘cirKus’. The Thing was established in the spring of 2000 when the three musicians met to play several concerts and to record their first CD on the Crazy Wisdom label(brain child of Swedish left field pioneer Conny Lindström). In 2001 they recorded another CD on the same label as a quartet with Joe McPhee. The trio was a long wanted constellation where several musical styles meet in a very high energetic outlet. All members are influenced by different traditions of free music derived from Germany, England and the US, and these influences are to be felt not necessarily heard. When the trio started out the book contained mainly tunes by Don Cherry. Since Joe McPhee`s participation, the Thing’s repertoire has included other free jazz standards by David Murray, Frank Lowe and Norman Howard. Also, the group’s enthusiasm towards rock music is heard when they play “To Bring You My Love” by PJ Harvey on the second CD. Today the book has expanded to include tunes by The White Stripes, The Sonics and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. These are just examples to show how little distinct musical styles are today, how similar the energy can be, and how much today’s audience is melted together, devoted to creative music. The Thing has performed with guests like Thurston Moore, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Otomo Yoshihide, Jim O’Rourke and Peter Evans. The Thing is now signed to the Norwegian label Smalltown Superjazzz. Mats Gustafsson is one of Europe’s biggest names on the free music scene. Through groups like Gush, AALY trio and Peter Brötzmann`s Chicago Tentet he has established himself as a very powerful saxophonist who has somewhat reinvented the way of playing the saxophone. In 2011 he received the Nordic Council Music Price: the biggest price for a musician in the Nordic countries. Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love have become known as Norway`s heaviest rhythm-section. Since their long-time collaboration started in 1992, they have been working together in several groups like School Dayswith Ken Vandermark, Scorch trio with Raoul Björkenheim, and the Swedish/Norwegian jazz-group Atomic.
Track Listing:
1. Cashback (Neneh Cherry) 5:58
2. Dream Baby Dream (Alan Vega / Martin Rev) 8:24
3. Too Tough To Die (Chloe Page / David Peter Holmes / Martina Topley-Bird) 5:13
4. Sudden Movement (Mats Gustaffson) 8:26
5. Accordion (Daniel Dumile / Otis Jackson) 6:10
6. Golden Heart (Don Cherry) 4:43
7. Dirt (David Alexander / Jamos Osterberg / Ronald Asheton / Scott Asheton) 6:47
8. What Reason (Ornette Coleman) 5:18
Personnel:
Neneh Cherry: vocals
Mats Gustafsson: tenor and baritone sax, live electronics, organ
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: double bass, electric bass, vibes, electronics
Paal Nilssen-Love: drums and percussion
Christer Bothén: guimbri and donso n’goni
Mats Äleklint: trombone
Per-Åke Holmlander: tuba and cimbasso
All horn arrangements by Mats Äleklint
Recorded at Harder Sound studios London, England
and Atlantis Studios, Stockholm, Sweden
Recorded, Produced & Mixed by Cameron McVey & Robert Harder
Associate Producer Paul Simm
Executive Production by Joakim Haugland (Smalltown Supersound)
and Conny Charles Lindström (Holy Madness)
Mastered by Andy “Hippy” Baldwin at Metropolis
Photography by Micke Keysendal
Design by Kim Hiorthøy
Special Thanks to Janne Hansson, Anders Jormin, Lennart Åberg, Johan Berthling & everyone at Hornstull Strand
Review:
At a glance, the script for The Cherry Thing might have been recycled: A global pop star returns from a long hiatus with an album of covers, backed by a jazz band. But nothing about this record’s sound — or its backstory, for that matter — even remotely suggests Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt or Paul McCartney singing standards.
Subverting the starring role is the singer and rapper Neneh Cherry, whose hors categorie dance-pop (“Buffalo Stance,” etc.) earned her 15 minutes of international fame in the late 1980s and ’90s. In the time since she released her last solo LP in 1996, three Norwegian and Swedish free-jazz musicians formed a remarkably versatile band. The Thing — with Mats Gustafsson on saxophones, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums — is as happy trading blows with fire-breathing saxophonists as it is rocking out on a PJ Harvey tune or “Louie Louie.”
This collaboration dates back only two years, but its ties run deep. Neneh Cherry, whose mother is Swedish, grew up largely in Sweden and the U.S.; The Thing’s members are from Scandinavia and have racked up many American collaborators (Flaten currently lives in Austin, Texas). Neneh Cherry’s discography lists work with punk rockers, trip-hop pioneers and African pop icons; The Thing is known for its unmediated punk energy and its recordings with The Cato Salsa Experience, a Swedish rock band. Cherry’s stepfather is the American improvising cornetist Don Cherry, and she spent much of her childhood touring with him and his fellow jazz legends; The Thing initially met expressly to play Don Cherry compositions, and named itself after one of his songs.
So it makes sense that they cover electronic punk duo Suicide (the beautiful “Dream Baby Dream”), English vocalist and songwriter Martina Topley-Bird (the driving “Too Tough to Die”), hard-rock band The Stooges (“Dirt”), prolix rapper MF Doom (an interpolation of the lyrics of “Accordion”). There are also fetching originals from Cherry and Gustafsson, as well as an inventive reconfiguration of a Don Cherry theme (“Golden Heart”). It’s a wild record, in an expect-the-unexpected sort of way; it’s also a homemade record, in that its arrangements feel spontaneous and minimally varnished by studio polish. It’s a raw record, in the way that a go-anywhere singer encounters an upright bass, a baritone saxophone and an actual drum set.
Out June 19, The Cherry Thing winds down with “What Reason,” a remarkably appropriate choice for the strengths and pre-history of this band. It’s an aching, sawing melody; it was also one of the few vocal features penned by free-jazz trailblazer Ornette Coleman, a close associate of Don Cherry. It closes here on a peaceful a cappella strain: “Only when I’m without you,” Neneh Cherry sings. Then, a most present silence.
Patrick Jarenwattananon (npr)
