Mike Stern: Echoes and Other Songs

With a running time of seventy-seven minutes plus, guitarist Mike Stern's Echoes and Other Songs is effectively a double album. And like most such expansive works—including classics like Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde (Columbia, 1966) and The Beatles (aka 'The White Album')(Apple, 1968)—it would benefit from consolidation of its best elements (as would a replacement of the amateurish cover design).

Even so, this is still a deceptively ambitious piece of work. Of course, advanced thinking has virtually always been the forte of Mike Stern, who's collaborated with the innovative likes of Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, and Bela Fleck. But his most significant achievement with this project may very well be how he manages to unify what are essentially two separate lineups of musicians.

The moments of note across the eleven cuts invariably involve Stern's guitar work. And regardless of the context, his playing immediately invokes the halcyon days of jazz-rock fusion: scythe-like runs incandescent with energy. Yet at the very start of the album, on "Connections," the sound shifts almost imperceptibly from hybrid mode into a more traditional jazz approach. Still, it hardly takes the eight minutes-plus duration of that track to discern the triggers: fittingly, the guitarist's lines arc far and wide as tenor saxophonist Chris Potter bears down with his notes in his distinct, but elliptical fashion.

Each man's instrumental personality thus permeates the opening cut. Likewise, the rhythm section on "I Hope So" and "Curtis" swiftly propels the bandleader into different but no less far-reaching spaces; bassist Richard Bona and drummer Dennis Chambers evince as much free-wheeling joy in their playing as their counterparts, respectively, Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez.

It is a tribute to Mike Stern's leadership on his sixteenth album under his own name that musicians with such impressive resumes exercise the humility necessary to productively incorporate themselves into these instrumental interactions. McBride, for instance, employs an electric instrument to both support and embellish the work of those around him on cuts including "Stuff Happens."

Stern often displays a decided blues influence that suits both the tune and the comparatively raw sound around him. That tone is particularly useful in counteracting a nagging similarity to the polished latter day recordings of Steely Dan that arise most predominantly on "Space Bar."

The resemblance may be inevitable given recently deceased producer Jim Beard's extended tenure with the group, not to mention Mike Stern's own eclectic enterprises over the years. But it does not render the comparison any less obvious (or palatable) than a likeness to middle-period Pat Metheny Group in the form of "I Hope So."

With Bona doing vocals—as he often did during his tenure with PMG—it is impossible not to hear such overt influence in the track. As with the aforementioned instance of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's (over) influence, this selection might well have been excised to maximize the resonance of the record.

Better that Echoes instead contained more of the propulsive likes of "Where's Leo?" a manifestation of crackling energy that cut brings to mind the vintage solo works of Return to Forever drummer Lenny White on his Venusian Summer (Nemperor, 1975) and Big City (Nemperor, 1977).

The aimless number "Crumbles" also undermines this long player as a genuinely distinctive piece of work. The finely-etched fretboard work of Stern that rescues "Gospel Song" from its derivative roots is, unfortunately, missing there, suggesting the innate potency of the project dissipated somewhat through a lack of discipline.

More concise performances—or perhaps some more real free-form improvisation on simple changes like those of "Could Be"—might well have maintained the power in the playing not only of the man whose name tops the bill, but also everyone that plays with him.