Your Mother Should Know (Nonesuch)
Brad Mehldau
Released February 10, 2023
DownBeat Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2023
Jazzwise Top 10 Albums of the Year 2023
Slate Best Jazz Albums of 2023
71st DownBeat Annual Critics Poll Top 20 Album of the Year
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About:
The live solo album features the pianist and composer’s interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison. Although other Beatles songs have long been staples of Mehldau’s solo and trio shows, he had not previously recorded any of the tunes on Your Mother Should Know. The album ends with a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed. Your Mother Should Know was recorded in September 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris.
“There is an undisputed universality to The Beatles,” Mehldau says. “Their music cuts across cultural and generational lines, as new listeners continue to discover it. There is an immediacy and integrity to their songs that draws everyone in.
“When I was getting started at the instrument, The Beatles were not on my radar yet, but a lot of the enduring piano-pop music I heard on the radio grew out of them. That music became part of my personality, and when I discovered The Beatles later, it all tied together. Their music, and its wide influence on other artists, continues to inform what I do.”
Mehldau further considers, “In his book The Western Canon, Harold Bloom confronted the question of what makes particular books endure: ‘The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange.’ “If we look at The Beatles and the multitude of artists who have been influenced by one or another facet of their oeuvre, this paradoxical recipe for longevity is one way to consider their ongoing footprint,” Mehldau continues. “For there is a good deal of strangeness to much of their music, particularly in the series of game-changing albums that begin with Rubber Soulthrough the release of their final record, Let It Be.”
Track Listing:
1. I Am The Walrus (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 4:14
2. Your Mother Should Know (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 2:18
3. I Saw Her Standing There (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 3:54
4. For No One (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 2:28
5. Baby’s In Black (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 7:19
6. She Said She Said (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 2:42
7. Here, There And Everywhere (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 3:58
8. If I Needed Someone (George Harrison) 2:25
9. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 6:42
10. Golden Slumbers (John Lennon And Paul McCartney) 8:17
11. Life On Mars? (David Bowie) 4:09
Personnel:
Brad Mehldau: piano
Recorded September 19-20, 2020 at Philharmonie de Paris,
Edited by Camille Grateau
Mixed by Nicolas Poitrenaud
Mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone
Graphic Design by Lawrence Azerrad
Produced by Samuel Thiebaut
Review:
Twenty-first century jazz piano icon Brad Mehldau has been investigating the best ways to interpret his own selection of cults and classics from the rock music canon ever since he started hanging on the LA singer-songwriter scene in the mid-to-late 1990s. In solo piano he found the perfect format for the job, and on the outstanding _10 Years Solo Live_ 4-CD/8 LP set issued in 2015, his unique renditions of rock singer-songwriter material rivalled any of those from the Great American Songbook.
Mehldau has been inspiring new generations with his mesmerising takes on songs by British artists in particular: Radiohead, Nick Drake and indeed The Beatles, to whom he pays tribute on this outstanding new solo piano release _Your Mother Should Know_. Recorded live at the Philharmonie de Paris, it focusses mostly on a selection of the Fab Four’s lesser-known album tracks, none of which have been recorded by him previously. Throughout, Mehldau is at his most succinctly refined, as if he has chipped away at anything non-essential or that sounds like it’s falling into the trap of merely jazzing up The Beatles, as those before him have too frequently done. Psychedelia artefacts such as ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘I am the Walrus’ sound natural to piano instrumentation in his hands and he wittily extends The Beatles’ earlier period songs’ black American roots with old R&B, stride and gospel piano on readings of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Baby’s in Black’, all delicately filtered through a vocabulary that includes jazz, blues, folk-rock and ‘romantic’ concert music.
Mehldau’s highly expressive touch and use of rubato and dynamics are nothing less than exemplary and unexpected twists add a new dimension to the material without abstracting the original songs. It’s a recipe that’s likely to satisfy both jazz lovers and fussily dedicated Beatles fans alike.
Selwyn Harris (Jazzwise)
