Listening to any free jazz artist in public will make you get looks. It’s sometimes called a bastardized form of ‘real jazz’. Well, what’s jazz? It doesn’t ever sound the same. It’s an ever changing expression. It was started in clubs. Perfected by geniuses disguised as junkies. It brought them a moment of peace from a world of flowing colors erupting from tragedy. The difference between jazz and free jazz is simply an extension to what was started all those years ago. It deserves proper respect and attention to every little detail layered and layered to something that isn’t striving for perfection. But for something your brain can’t makes sense of at first, second, fifth or twentieth listen. Instead it poses a question. Are you ready to be reshaped?
Crown Larks features Lorraine Bailey on vocals, keys, alto saxophone, flute, and synth bass; Jack Bouboushian on vocals, guitar, organ, and microphone; Bill Miller on drum kit, and percussion; and Matt Puhr on bass. Together their punk jazz infused with a melted psyche poses a question: Where does this begin and end? Is it a mess. But a mess many will bind to for clarity. It drenches your mind with echoes driving you mad. It’s time to loss yourself in their LP “Population”
The aptly named “Howls” begins with a wave of gently fluttering non arranged beauty. But, even as everything flows with grace everything hitting your ear is jarring. Jack takes on vocal duties in an almost spoken word style with Lorraine peaking in and out. “Circus Luvv” sound like an actual circus with half a Pink of absinthe spilling down your chin. A borage of lights, smoke, and colors flow freely into everyone of your senses. It’s like your entering another world. This music perfectly captures that over stimulation game atmosphere to perfection. Sounds reminiscent to engines starting and stopping the entire time. Sung through a series of echoes “Lithops Life” drifts in like wind known all too well in the Chicago suburbs. Primal drumming really glued everything together as a collapsing and regrouping. Each track drives itself deep into your head and corrodes what you held dear. But leaves something completely new in its place. New, frightening, and wonderful.
This entire album will affect each of your senses. It will shake them to their core. and make you feel alive even if it’s for the first time.
Richard Murray
POW! Magazine
