Live From Brussels: The Residents, Marco Marcelletti, Lynn Cassiers & Jean-Paul Estiévenart

The Residents
Botanique
Brussels, Belgium
January 29, 2023

Right at the start of their European tour, The Residents appeared at Botanique, a principal Brussels music venue. Calling this venture Dog Stab! 2023 strongly suggests a concern with their classic 1978 album Duck Stab! and the more recent (2020) Metal, Meat & Bone: Songs Of Dyin' Dog, a means of making the repertoire span a large chunk of their five-decade progression. Although touring regularly on a global level, such outings are still relatively rare, given the extended time-span involved. Hence, this gig seemed pretty damned sold out, with nary a space to twitch.

Always dressing on the side of anonymity, The Residents have this time elected to wear identical gangster-style suits, topped by trilbys, all covered with a mass of tiny eyeball motifs, one of their chief symbols, with gnashing canine teeth smiling from their oral areas. One half of the original Residential guiding lights, Hardy Fox, departed the band in 2015, and then the Earth in 2018. We presume that Homer Flynn still lurks under the singing mask. His voice is certainly very much inhabiting the signature deadpan snarl (blended with childlike curiosity) of the established Residential songbook. If anything, The Residents are now sounding savagely rejuvenated, especially with their current guitarist's acid sting, recalling the wired-up frazzle of the old Snakefinger daze. The other present members tackled keyboards (Mellotron) and a kit of electronic drum pads.

Even though your scribe was only spinning Duck Stab! a few weeks earlier, the inclusion of "Hello Skinny" and "Laughing Song" didn't sound remarkably close to the familiar iterations. Fortunately, the evening opened with "Jambalaya (On The Bayou)," covered on their Hank Williams (and John Philip Sousa) album of Stars And Hank Forever! (1986). Vocalist 'Flynn' sounded completely committed throughout, as if he'd bred some extra visceral rawness since previous tours, around ten or fifteen years back. There was a point where The Residents were sometimes disappointingly lighter, revolving around a slightly skewed Broadway narrative, overlong on the storytelling. Not now. The songs were all short and pointed, loaded with hooks, filled with friction, clicking with rickety humour. A perfect climax was attained via two numbers, one recent, the other being a supreme classic. "Die! Die! Die!" scalded with its venom, then encore "Diskomo" presented the ultimate chance for twisted gyrations, one of the true disco classics, unnervingly addictive.

Marco Marcelletti / Lynn Cassiers / Jean-Paul Estiévenart
Jazz Station
January 29, 2023

There's a new jam session in town! Well, at least it's only been running since September 2022. Early to start, the doors open before 6pm, and the first set begins not long afterwards. In fact, your scribe was only a few minutes tardy, and most of the seats had already been grabbed. It's a long session, finishing around 10pm, but even the first two hours seemed quite eventful. As with many jam sessions, there's a host band. On this occasion it was a trio led by the Italian (Brussels resident) pianist Marco Marcelletti, who was joined by Federico Stocchi (bass) and Gionata Giardina (drums). While being captivating in their mood-painting, and concentrating on Marcelletti's compositions, this trio was an unlikely choice for the governing combo. The sound of their pieces was markedly individualistic, not really encouraging the interpretation of standards. This also made them seem quite insular, not a group to lead an evening of partying jazz jamming. They played a fine set, acting very well as a welcome to the session, but after a brief pause, the first jam set was undertaken by a completely different crew.

Being one of the chief Brussels venues, Jazz Station can act like a magnet for familiar players. It's remarkable to have singer Lynn Cassiers and trumpeter Jean-Paul Estiévenart appearing in a seemingly impromptu line-up. Cassiers hovered at the conventional scatting end of her style, but she couldn't possibly vocalise like a mainstream jazz singer, so there was an edge of querying not-quite-straight-ness. Estiévenart stuck to his expected virtuoso attack, slinging high shots and buckshotting impossible graph curves. Could the second two hours have kept up a comparable energy? It was time for The Residents, a fifteen minute walk away. This could normally be a prime point to depart, as there's an unfortunate clash with the regular Sunday 8pm sessions at the central Roskam bar, which are dedicated to the more wayward jazz and improvisation explorers of Belgium. The first two hours felt like a good chunk, but perhaps the Jazz Station audience shifts and replenishes itself over the full four.

Comments