Cole Schmidt

Sick Boss: Businessless

by Chris May
February 10, 2024

This bracing sophomore album from Vancouver's improvising sextet Sick Boss resonates with the beyond-genre territory of the late Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die quartet. At a surface level there is the shared use of trumpet and cello, but deeper than that, Businessless embraces the riot grrrl abandon so beloved of Branch. Echoes of Fly Or Die often crop up: the brief melodic motif of opener “Useless Genius 1" is something Branch might have written, as are episodes on other tracks, ...