Club D'Elf: Loon & Thrush

In overseeing Club D'Elf since its inception over 25 years ago, founder-leader-bassist Mike Rivard has maintained a core lineup around which has revolved a colorful cast of collaborators as eclectic as the music they have played. 

Loon & Thrush is no exception, yet its creation took place in the shadow of the passing of vocalist- multi-instrumentalist Brahim Frigbaine, not just an artistic contributor, but a practical point of reference for the group's exotic pursuits. Much as Rivard collected himself to rally in the wake of serious illness prior to the gestation of the preceding Club d'Elf studio album, You Never Know (Face Pelt, 2022) so has he, with the customarily adventurous ensemble in tow, soldiered on in the wake of their departed comrade.

In doing so, the group has chosen carefully from the esteemed canon of the Grateful Dead, opting to cover two selections of that iconic band's and in fact positioning "Bird Song" and "New Speedway Boogie" at the very start and near the exact center of the ten tracks running just over 60 minutes. Duke Levine's electric sitar outlines the melody of the former, around which Matt Kilmer inserts trance-inducing percussion. 

Effectively an invocation of the muse, that opening cut makes way for the balmy horns of Tom Hall, Alex Lee-Clark and Brian Thomas on the title song, tones bookended on the penultimate number "Like A Silence." Veteran "Club" member Paul Schultheis' crisp Rhodes piano provides vivid contrasts for the saxophonist, trumpeter and trombonist respectively: the density so conjured is enticing, so much so it lays the groundwork for the hypnotic remainder of the LP.

As fostered by the second of the pair of songs from the aforementioned psychedelic warriors from San Francisco: ostensibly, the implicit topicality is unmistakable. The late poet/lyricist  for the Dead, Robert Hunter, composed the words based on the The Rolling Stones' free concert debacle of late 1969 (chronicled in the film Gimme Shelter (Cinema V,1970)), but its opening lines in particular speak directly (and forcefully) to the garbled, divisive nature of our contemporary dialogue.

Without singing or speaking the words, Rivard and company abide with their own liberating instrumental lexicon. As the bandleader's own composition "Softly" crystallizes around speech generated from the turntables of yet another charter d'Elfer, Mister Rourke, the dream-like quality of the record becomes all pervasive with the novel textures of Kevin Barry's lap steel. Meanwhile, Rivard's bass weaves in and out of the Danny Blume mix (Will Holland did that work on track ten).

By the time venerable band drummer Dean Johnston's co-write with Rivard ensues, the musicianship reaches its most involved apex. "Dux Lux" signals the home stretch of the sixty-minutes or so of Loon & Thrush and epitomizes how closely these studio recordings approximate a logical flow of spontaneous live improvisation at which this ensemble excels.  Colorful as those are, they belie the otherwise eye-pleasing black-and-white cover art by Doug Sirois, well-designed to evoke the bucolic setting that inspired the leader's original compositions.

Lyle Brewer's precise electric guitar figures in "Atlas Mountain Hop"—within the most overtly Moroccan-based motifs here—only deepen the impression of this uncanny end result. Consequently, as kindred spirit soul chanteuse Hayley Jane's voice appears on the finale—the ever-so-fittingly titled "Level Up Your Soul"—her tuneful, quasi-chanting sounds like nothing so much as Club d'Elf's collective reflection and commentary on that very state of being to which the name of that song alludes.