After a serendipitous meeting with a gypsy jazz outfit out of Hawaii, drummer
Les DeMerle
found his way into a half-songbook, half-gypsy jazz outing that alternates between casual swings and frantic string swooning. There's an odd juxtaposition flowing throughout the album -- the gypsy jazz, provided outstandingly by the
Gypsy Pacific
quartet, plays wonderful and light renditions in the
Reinhardt
/
Grappelli
style. At the same time, however,
DeMerle
is irrepressible, bashing his way through long and almost out-of-place drum solos in the opening track. Vocalist
Bonnie Eisele
has an excellent voice, but has a similar tendency to use bombast and outweigh the string contributions. It's just in a few restricted locations that the two styles merge well --
W.C. Handy
's
"St. Louis Blues"
provides a surprising bit of Spanish flair in its mix, for example. The album is chock-full of good performances all around, but it seems to be two albums placed next to one another with the true synergies coming and going rather than staying -- when the styles meet up, it's excellent. They just don't meet up as cleanly or as often as one really wants after the first doses. ~ Adam Greenberg