Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Bridge Of Flowers: A Soft Day's Night

3

Bridge Of Flowers: A Soft Day's Night

By

View read count
Go back to a time when music genre categories were not in effect, and listeners were open to crossing borders. Miles Davis was invited to play at rock concerts and Carlos Santana could cover a John Coltrane composition. Some might recall that the innovative free jazz label ESP Disk, started in 1963 by Bernard Stollman, put out albums by The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, and The Godz concurrently with free jazz from Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman. With the revival of the label in 2015, music of all sorts is beginning to flow again. A Soft Day's Night by the Massachusetts' lo-fi indie rock band Bridge Of Flowers fits nicely alongside recent releases like Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFunk and pianist Matthew Shipp's explorations.

The music is experimentally confessional, like a 17th century Samuel Pepys diary modernized to take into account drugs, disillusionment, and a pandemic. Wait, those are the same troubles that troubled Pepys' London. The music draws from early Pavement and The Velvet Underground. Guitarist and vocalist Jeff Gallagher channels Marc Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitans, albeit a more rocked out version. Like Ribot, Gallagher favors a matter of fact truth telling. "Year Without Summer" and "Vinegar And Salt" are open wound descriptions of loss, while the story of little "Tambo" and his drug trip ignites a catchy anthem. The music sounds like early demo versions of songs by the 1980's band The Feelies. Cleaning it up though, with a producer, engineer, and some filters would certainly destroy the vitality of Bridge of Flower's message.

Track Listing

Vinegar and Salt; Empty Room; Aloe Vera; Tour Rider; Year Without a Summer; Poetry in Motion; Tambo; Brittle; Mirage; Never.

Personnel

Additional Instrumentation

Jeff Gallagher: guitar, vocals; Jonathan Hanson: guitar, keyboards; Shane Bruno: bass; Chris Wojtkowski: drums.

Album information

Title: A Soft Day's Night | Year Released: 2021 | Record Label: ESP Disk

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.