Thom Gossage Other Voices: The Now Beyond

Gossage keeps his music at a slow simmer when it is not sombre. This gives it a sameness of approach when a change of moods and discernible tempo would have resulted in a balanced outing. The opening track, “Ring Around The Rainer,” begins brightly, but then the duelling horns of Rémi Bolduc and Frank Lozano take that away and stay locked in combat a tad too long. When they give way to the ensemble there isn’t a cognitive feature that would have raised the song to an appealing level.

One could understand if there was a gradual heating when it came to “Slow Poke,” which is how it should be. In actuality Gary Schwartz lilts with the acoustic guitar, leading Miles Perkin to sing in gentle exultation and with an undercurrent of joy that envelops the band before the pulse rises to kick in the climax. Schwartz rocks on “The Message,” bending notes on the electric guitar, pushed by Gossage on the drums opening the avenue for the horns to play in and shift the timbre to a more sedate stance. Watching musicians at their craft is not the same as listening to them, that's for sure.

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