Ronan Guilfoyle's Bemusement Arcade: At Swing, Two Birds

If there were Grammys for the most punning name for a jazz band, or for the most enigmatic album title, then Irish bassist Ronan Guilfoyle could well bag a brace. The title of the wonderfully coined Bemusement Arcade's debut album is a wordplay on Irish humorist Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds (Longman Green & Co., 1939) —a wild and woolly work of satirical postmodern metafiction beloved by existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, writer Aldous Huxley and rock 'n' blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, among others. Guilfoyle's "two birds" more concretely reference Charlie Parker, whose rhythmic and harmonic language influences the title track, at the very least. In short, this is vibrant post-bop that swings as it stings.

Guilfoyle has gone down the Parker route before, notably on Bird (IMC, 2003), his potent recalibration of Parker tunes, in the company of Julian Arguelles, Rick Peckham and Tom Rainey. But if Guilfoyle is still sharpening his composer's blade on Parker's stone on the title track, the other originals draw on sources as diverse as George Gershwin, Lennie Tristano, Jerome Kern, the blues, and John Coltrane's classic quartet. And with a little spillage from one influence into another, half the fun is working out just where and how these inspirations manifest themselves, because if there is a constant from one Guilfoyle album to the next, it is that his picaresque rhythmic play and ear-catching harmonic structures ensure a highly personal outcome.

To be sure, the knotty unison lines frequently relayed by guitarist Chris Guilfoyle and alto saxophonist Sam Norris flow from the language of bebop and its post-modern tributaries, while the blues and Guilfoyle senior's walking bass lines are never far from the surface. On a burner like "Diversionary Tactics," the changes-based "Lenniesphere," or bluesy numbers such as "Two Blues" and "Blue Angels," the music is inherently familiar on the surface level—but dig down just a little, and a churning undercurrent of shifting meters and slowly teasing melodies emerge to muddy the waters.

A couple of bass solos stand out, notably on the title track, but it is the leader's rhythmic elasticity, his playful changes in tempi—on both walking bass lines and in his more free-spirited directions—that command the attention. As Norris and Chris Guilfoyle light up one terrific solo after another over drummer Darren Beckett's animated polyrhythms, it would be easy to subconsciously underestimate the bass's role, but make no mistake: it is driving everything. Ronan Guilfoyle's searching lines, melodious yet edgy—and a little mischievous to boot—stem from traditions old, contemporary and subtly global. Not for nothing does his music provoke as it seduces.

A word on Chris Guilfoyle: though a longstanding presence on the Irish jazz scene, the guitarist's infrequent releases mean he is possibly not an overly familiar name to many readers. His playing on this album, however, reaffirms what Irish jazz heads have known for years; he is a seriously good guitarist. Those curious should check out his self-produced albums Umbra (2016) and West (2018)—both well worth the deep dive.

In At Swim Two Birds O'Brien writes: "For all things change, making way for each other." Ronan Guilfoyle seems to concur, crafting a fine album that proves jazz tradition is as restless—and as thrillingly alive—as ever.

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