Precarious Towers: Ten Stories

Precarious Towers is a Midwestern-based quintet whose second recording, Ten Stories, is as bare-bones an album as one could imagine: a plain CD (without name or artwork) resting in a pale-blue jacket (no tray or protective sleeve) that includes a list of songs, composers and personnel plus recording details. That's it. From a reviewer's point of view, however, such cosmetic details are irrelevant, as the only component that matters is the music itself.

Judged solely on that basis, Precarious Towers is on far less precarious ground, even though the album's title is slightly misleading, as there are only nine stories (one, "Non-Non," is repeated as a finale). Every one of the ten (or nine) was composed by a member of the group: either alto saxophonist Sharel Cassity, vibraphonist Mitchell Shiner, pianist Johannes Wallmann, bassist John Christensen or drummer Devin Drobka.

The songs themselves are by and large pleasant, residing in a gray area somewhere between bop and chamber jazz. The same could be said of the quintet, whose temperament is more reflective than gregarious. That's not necessarily displeasing, as long as everyone is sincerely committed to that point of view—which, luckily, is the case here. Cassity, an alumna of the great DIVA Jazz Orchestra (which says a lot), is an admirable soloist, technically sound and conceptually fluent, while Shiner, who shares the front line, offers Milt Jackson-like counterpoint. Cassity plays alto on every number save her own meditative "Tone Poem," on which she switches to flute.

Wallman has his bright moments too, soloing with assurance and teaming with Christensen and Drobka to comprise an able rhythm section. Wallman wrote a pair of the album's more genial numbers, "Same River, Once" and "Nice Day," the last of which displays clear gospel roots. Christensen's "Purpley" is cool and calm, "Vega" only slightly more animated, if the word even applies. Drobka composed the rhyhmic "Non-Non," which swings about as much as the quintet seems to desire. Shiner wrote the other tunes, "Hutcherspired" and "Whistle in the Wind," neither of which causes the ensemble to work up a sweat.

While the music on Ten Stories is more dreamy than dynamic, it is certainly well played, and should be of interest to those who appreciate jazz set in a leisurely framework.