Allison Philips: Make it Better

In agreement with the wistful but pleasant nostalgia of the photograph of her grandmother that adorns its cover, there is a dignified, almost blue collar ethos imbued within the locomotive, highbrowed modern jazz of Brooklyn trumpeter Allison Philips' Make It Better," where warm, resolute melodies ground the improvisation templates with a sense of purpose, history and tact. Written, like much of world's mid-00's releases, in the contemplative limbo of the pandemic, where Philips had worked for over a year for a catering company, she and her quartet make music that functions as both a home and a vehicle (perhaps a station wagon with some miles but good bones), a place to sit thoughtfully but also venture out. It is a familiar sound that has found homes in coastal culture enclaves like Brooklyn and Seattle, but it is done with a particular sensitivity and maturity here.

Not all of the album is wood paneling and vintage furniture, to be clear; as much folksiness as there is, the music is still full of adventure and challenge. The album's opener, "Welcome Back Daisy," makes a short declarative statement before throwing the listener in the deep end of a melange of competing, occasionally agreeing trumpet and tenor threading, and "Tandem"'s fever dream rodeo melody opens the coliseum gates to a similar wild menagerie of sound. There are moments within the straightforward broodiness of "Door Song" where drummer, Conor Parks, ever so slightly destabilizes the waltz underneath in a Paul Motian fashion and both Philips and tenor saxophonist Neta Renaan, throughout the record, push and pull the tonal focus off its axis, Philips with a sturdy sonic center that pirouettes across the grain and Renaan with a more frenetic, burnished approach.

However, amicable and alluring melodism is definitely the calling card of the record. The album's indie-rock-imbued lead single, "Pulaski," named after the Brooklyn-to-Queens connecting bridge that regularly found its way into Philips' commute, pulsates and breezes like the bike rides that inspired it, with a deceptively simple yet sophisticated earworm. The two-horn harmony on "Hit the Ground" creates quiet, melancholic movements with a forlornness typically found in the underdog ballads of 1960s and '70s Broadway. The album's title track is underpinned by a march that emphasizes its hymnal, almost vaudevillian quality, one that sounds like it descends straight from the early 20th- century working folk in their parlors and places of worship.

The final track drives home this sense of tranquil honor with the album's sole cover, a tender but stirring version of Patsy Cline's "She's Got You." Philips and Renaan, anchored by bassist Isaac Levian's dutiful recreation of midcentury country's particular sense of motion, pair up in a gratifying melody/harmony duo act that captures the feeling of retiring the doldrums of the day with a vinyl record or a group singalong or even a stray performance on television last seen ages ago without being handcuffed by the song's explicit lyrical laments. It is an album closer that suggests that tomorrow is unwritten but what you have today is good enough.

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