Things Of This Nature: Things Of This Nature

Caylie Davis grew up in Eugene, Oregon, playing trumpet in a town not exactly known for avant-garde-leaning jazz before making her way to New York to enroll at the Manhattan School of Music. There, she studied under Ingrid Jensen, Nadje Noordhuis and Jon Faddis—three players who, between them, cover a wide stylistic range. Davis casts an even broader net. Booker Little and Maurice Ravel both factor into how she thinks about sound, while the human voice remains just as central to her conception as anything with valves and a bell.

Davis' quartet, Things of This Nature, rounds out with Chris Ferrari on woodwinds, Shogo Yamagishi on bass and J.J. Mazza on drums—notably without a piano. The group has been working regularly around New York at venues like Nublu and the Downtown Music Gallery, shaping a sound that lands somewhere between Ornette Coleman and a punk rock show, an unlikely pairing that makes sense once heard.

The record opens with "Shortstop Right Wing Chicken Parm," a title that tells you something about where this band's head is at. The track is both combustible and tightly wound, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. The band fires on all cylinders, threading peppery unison lines with a rhythm section that stays buoyant while pushing forward. "Gutted Pills" continues that momentum with a streaming, propulsive feel that never quite settles.

Things of This Nature is doing its own thing. "How Does It Sound Now" and "A Tough Situation" move between blues-rooted grooves, open improvisation and medium-tempo bop lines. On the latter, Yamagishi's extended arco passages and nimble fingering spark a surge beneath Ferrari's brash soloing, all riding atop tightly coiled rhythmic development. The band closes with the Coleman-inspired "Composition 4," injecting restlessness and forward motion, tempered by soft-spoken phrases and a punctuated gait.

Davis phrases like a singer who picked up the trumpet as a second instrument and never quite forgot the first. There is melody underneath everything she plays, even when the lines turn sharp. Mazza knows when to drive and when to step aside. Yamagishi anchors the music without weighing it down. The humor helps too—you do not name a song "Shortstop Right Wing Chicken Parm" without knowing exactly what you are doing—and that willingness to be playful keeps the record from taking itself too seriously. In 2025, crowded as it was with worthwhile jazz, few records slipped in this quietly and hit this hard.