Adam Nolan: Listen to Me Now

Listen to Me Now evolves from a blank radar screen. At first glance, there's nothing there. Blank grid. Gray expanse. Then, suddenly, one blip, then another. In-breath-out-breath then another. Uncountable seconds later one's juggling a whole new multiverse. Action is demanded. Questions abound. Run for the exits or find the teachable moment? The learnable instant? "Roll the Dice," the starting pistol of Irish free jazzing saxophonist Adam Nolan's fearless new testimony, answers that question and other such inquiries as well.

Eight duly noted, spell binding, action oriented moments of decision tinder the fire under Listen to Me Now, Nolan's fifth big bang overall. But bassist Derek Whyte (he of the Stanley Clarke method) and drummer Jason McNamara (no stranger to the Lenny White school) have a few questions of their own. They want answers too. And that's the great debate that sets the stage for Nolan's impassioned counterpoint.

Street sworn improvisors, IED-like tracks such as "Protests," "Abandon Notions," "Volcanos," "We Can Go Separate Ways" flare into being, etch themselves upon the firmament, then take aim on the next. Blowing off Whyte's spontaneously combusting runs, rolls, and keening freneticism, Nolan flashes and burns, simmers and soothes. His yowls are street level. His pleading is spiritual. Coloring well beyond the margins, McNamara tinkers with time then moves on to other more pressing concerns which lends "Solitude" the air of a quieter, no less cumulative, ambition. Clamorous and rapturous in that rancorous and most victorious Ornette Coleman tradition, Listen to Me Now is a zealous, well deserved treat for the head.