Imaginative Postbop Tunesmithing from Nick Hempton

The shadowy red-and-black cd sleeve of Nick Hempton‘s new Posi-Tone album Odd Man Out implies noir but it’s mostly not. It’s a little less ambitious than Hempton’s 2011 album The Business but there’s a lot of tunefulness, clever composition and purist playing, a solid melodic postbop (and occasionally prebop) effort with Mike Dease on trombone, Art Hirahara on piano, Marco Panascia on bass and Dan Aran on drums.

They open with Nice Crackle, an altered dixieland bounce, Hempton’s expansive alto solo answered by a more rhythmic one from Dease. One of the album’s standout tracks, the ambitious narrative Five Ways Through Harsimus Cove tiptoes and then waltzes, takes the long way around through some sketchy territory and then suddenly they’re in the clear: the way they bring it back to the waltz theme midway through is great fun. By contrast, Winnie Blues is a straight-up, pretty predictably bluesy Hempton feature.

Their take of Billy Strayhorn’s Day Dream is languid and lyrical, Hempton’s gentle ornamentation slowly picking up steam. The album’s best track, The Set-Up, works a creepy Johnny Mandel-esque late 50s LA cool swing, Hempton choosing his spots, Dease taking a more gritty, squirrelly approach; they finally hit the noir head-on right before the end. The sense of suspense keeps going with Fifth Floor Run-Up, a latin vamp subtly cached under endless hints of a lickety-split swing that the band never hits head-on.

Nights and Mornings sounds like a rewrite of I Cover the Waterfront, morning slowly emerging out of night and then receding again. The suspense returns with The Slip and its droll nonchalance that the band absolutely refuses to give away: they keep walking and walking and walking and finally there’s a payoff when it’s clear that they made it out! The diptych A Bicycle Accident coalesces slowly into a funky shuffle and then morphs into a blithe mambo of sorts and has an ending that nobody sees coming. Streetlight Lament is less a lament than a fond, wee-hours reminiscence. The album winds up with an easygoing, bluesy take on Randy Newman’s Blue Shadows, more of a late afternoon than nocturnal theme. Hempton’s slightly smoky tone, purposeful playing and imaginative compositions make him someone to keep an eye on.

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