Johan Lindvall Trio: This Is Not About You

If you ask a jazz fan to name the greatest piano trio albums ever made, the probability is that their top twenty choices will include Erroll Garner's Concert By The Sea (Columbia, 1955), Ahmad Jamal's But Not For Me (Argo, 1958), Bill Evans' Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961), Keith Jarrett's Standards Vol. 2 (ECM, 1985) and Brad Mehldau's The Art Of The Trio Vol. 1 (Nonesuch, 1997). Sweden's Esbjorn Svensson's From Gagarin's Point Of View (Superstudio Gul, 1999) might make it, too—but that would almost certainly be the sole entry from Scandinavia.

This has nothing to do with artistic excellence and everything to do with the longstanding US-centric mindset which still permeates much of the jazz community over half a century since the music became an international artform. Take Norwegian pianist Svein Finnerud's psychedelic-flavoured tour de force Plastic Sun (Sonet, 1970). A uniquely successful piano trio attempt to capture the acid-drenched zeitgeist of the late 1960s, the album continues to resonate powerfully as pure music, even though it is now long separated from its original cultural context. But beyond Scandinavia, Plastic Sun would be unlikely to scrape into a list of the top five-hundred piano trio albums, let alone a top twenty.

Since Finnerud's masterpiece, there have been a handful of other Scandinavian piano trio discs of approaching stature. Fellow Norwegian Espen Berg's Free To Play (Odin, 2019)—part in-the-moment soul, part through-composed formalism, part collective improvisation—is one of them. And now, with almost indecent haste, comes Swedish pianist Johan Lindvall's sophomore trio album, This Is Not About You, a deep strata, 360 degree, access all areas, haute couture, Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval blinder. Whether Berg or Lindvall's albums ultimately endure like Finnerud's has, time will tell—but both are contenders.

Lindvall's writing—he composed all eleven tunes on This Is Not About You with the exception of "Rapt," by Karen O—and his trio's performance, share something of the trippy vibe of Plastic Sun, and something, too, of the complete-cosmos-within-itself quality of Sun Ra's music (plus a little bit of fast forwarded Erik Satie for good measure). In the most part pretty and delicate, but underscored by vibrant motor-rhythms, each of the tracks presents a fragment of melody to which Lindvall returns time and again, dance-of-the-seven-veils fashion, making small adjustments and revealing new aspects. As Fats Waller, another type of pianist entirely, put it: "The more you hear it, lady, the more you hear it."

The listening experience can best be described as liminal, an accretion of perfect little shards of melody heard as though through a fissure in time and space. And all the while, bassist Adrian Fiskum Myhr and drummer Andreas Skår Winther (both players are Norwegian) maintain an irresistible forward motion, sometimes ostinato-based and explicit, sometimes impressionistic, but always present. This Is Not About You is as near as makes no difference a four-and-a-half stars album, and is held back only by its rather brief thirty-two-minute playing time. But those thirty-two minutes are pure bliss.