CD Reviews

Dave Douglas and Keystone

Moonshine | www.greenleafmusic.com

By JEFF TAMARKIN | April 1, 2008

3.0 Stars

Just as 2005’s Grammy-nominated Keystone nodded to the Keystone Cops comedies that gave scandal-slandered silent-film comic Fatty Arbuckle his start, Moonshine borrows its title (and, ostensibly, its mood) from an Arbuckle film, one co-starring Buster Keaton. But any hint at nostalgia in the sonics is oblique at best, and had Douglas not brought the matter up himself in the liner notes, few, I imagine, would have made the connection. More to the point might be the progressivism of late-’60s/early-’70s electro-funk-fusion, but that too is just a flailing guess. This live/studio hybrid wears its own futurism, not somebody else’s, with the band now named for that previous album. Throughout, drummer Gene Lake, bassist Brad Jones, Fender Rhodesman Adam Benjamin, and turntablist DJ Olive create an expansive, constantly shifting bed over which Douglas’s trumpet and Marcus Strickland’s saxophone run amok. The forward-propelled “Kitten,” suggestive of anything but (’cept maybe a sultry sex kitten), is all grit and clash. “Married Life” hints at one discordant relationship. “Tough” toughs it out for nearly 11 freewheeling minutes, and the mystery of “Dog Star” is more noir than slapstick. Moonshine is neither scandalous nor wacky, but it is a bit tipsy.

DAVE DOUGLAS & KEYSTONE | Scullers Jazz Club, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston | April 8 | 617.562.4111