Resonance Kansas

Resonance

Karl Latham

DroptoneJazz, 2007

http://www.karllatham.com/

REVIEW BY: Benjamin Ray

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 08/16/2007

It's hard to shake the feeling that cross-genre covers are little more than novelties. Think of those bluegrass tributes to Aerosmith and you'll get the idea. On the other hand, sometimes these work better than they have a right to, such as Dolly Parton covering "Stairway to Heaven."

Because it is such an ingrained art form, jazz can get away with covering almost anything and make it sound cool. The recent Smooth Citizen album Shadows of the Fading Light attested to this, as it took little-known classic rock tunes and infused them with a fresh spin, somewhere between an homage and reinvention that the original artists no doubt would have applauded.

Whether they would applaud Resonance is another matter. Drummer Karl Latham and his three bandmates here are vastly talented, but their interpretations of songs by U2, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder and Bjork seem to be little more than frames for improvisation. "Manic Depression" exemplifies this, Hendrix's original three-minute rocker turned into a nine-minute jazz piece, with only a minute or so of anything resembling the original tune.

Not that this is a bad thing, but it seems that doing a cover is one thing and writing an original is another, and mixing the two with no real payoff seems a sin somehow. Again, it has nothing to do with the member's talent, but rather a seemingly lost musical direction, a desire to be so radical with the covers that it's not worth putting the original's name on.