PHIL HAYNES & FREE COUNTRY “Liberty Now!”

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ARTIST

Phil Haynes & Free Country

ALBUM TITLE

“Liberty Now!”

LABEL

Corner Store Jazz

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In a rather singular pairing of new (and previously unreleased) material with selections spanning seventeen years and four officially issued albums, Phil Haynes – second to none when it comes to original (and at times somewhat idiosyncratic) projects – brings together a total of twenty-six tracks associated with this distinctive quartet of three strings and drums, with all members contributing vocals (though Hank Roberts clearly emerges as primus inter pares in this respect).

Twelve tracks are newly recorded, while fourteen are “retrieved” from earlier releases: “Free Country” (1997, two tracks), “The Way the West Was Won” (2002, eight tracks), “Something Beatles” (2013, one track – “Revolution”), and “60/69 My Favorite Things” (2014, three tracks). The new material presents itself as both a distillation and a natural evolution of what came before – fully cohesive, highly refined, and marked by a certain aristocratic poise, suggestive of a (quasi) cultivated chamber aesthetic, albeit without eschewing clearly perceptible country inflections.

The result is a body of work that feels noble in character and predominantly instrumental, featuring four compositions by Haynes (among which “Strands of Liberty”, “Corner Store Strut”, and “Joy” stand out), two by Yanda (notably “Next of King” and “Home Road”), and two each by Roberts (“Higgins” and “The Wire”, both of considerable weight) and Gress. The archival material, by contrast, forms a mosaic that is not always immediately easy to decode, whether in terms of selection or juxtaposition, and is more overtly marked by pop-oriented elements.

Taken as a whole, the album offers a comprehensive and emblematic cross-section of nearly three decades of activity by a group that, as noted, is anything but conventional – not only in its instrumentation, but also in the striking breadth and permeability of the aesthetic principles that guide it. In short, a compelling itinerary, rich in stimuli and multiple points of entry.

Alberto Bazzurro

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