New York City's international music big band TriBeCaStan turned heads with their Twisted Christmas EP in 2013 because it brought the unit's now signature meld of global and improvisational styles, ranging from klezmer, calypso, ska to jazz, Bulgarian wedding music, and exotica to bear on eight carols played as four medleys. Coal, Again! is the ten-piece's second effort, but it's not only longer, clocking in at 28 minutes, it's more playful and adventurous without losing the seasonal magic. TriBeCaStan's humor is still here ...
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New York City's international music big band TriBeCaStan turned heads with their Twisted Christmas EP in 2013 because it brought the unit's now signature meld of global and improvisational styles, ranging from klezmer, calypso, ska to jazz, Bulgarian wedding music, and exotica to bear on eight carols played as four medleys. Coal, Again! is the ten-piece's second effort, but it's not only longer, clocking in at 28 minutes, it's more playful and adventurous without losing the seasonal magic. TriBeCaStan's humor is still here -- check the ska/klezmer opener "O Little Town Of Bethlehemayhem" (with steel drums added in for good measure) -- but the band has also thoroughly woven their own manic and disciplined persona into these tunes so tightly, it's inextricable from music on their more "serious" albums. The country waltz approach that introduces "Silver Bells," with slide guitars, Jew's and African gourd harps, slightly dissonant mandolin, and ukulele gives way to a bittersweet Yiddish folk melody accompanied by strolling, vintage R&B horns, winds, accordions, and processional drumming. The set's two long closers are Coal, Again!'s true gems, though. The eight-plus minute "Shchedryk/Carol of the Bells" commences with bansuri and wood flutes, gourd percussion, and drums before the tenor saxophone and trombones roil in the bottom end and open it up to real improvisation. The chart is tight, yet panoramic before it becomes a modern vanguard jazz workout. "Jingle Bells" offers an expressionist modal intro by tablas, bass, harps, synthesizer, mandolin, and other stringed instruments as well as a muted trumpet. The melody doesn't begin to assert itself until nearly two minutes in, and even then gradually, with Carnatic drones and hypnotic repetition riding alongside, through, and above the melody, expanding it harmonically. It's so lusciously textured and spacy it could have been arranged by Les Baxter. There isn't another holiday record like Coal, Again! It's a vast musical forward from Twisted Christmas. TriBeCaStan has incorporated holiday music not as a gimmick, but as another genre in their particularly gleeful brand of global music exploration. And while they are serious musicians, they never take themselves too seriously. While Coal, Again! is not for staunch traditionalists, it is for those who've grown immune to, or are irritated by, Christmas records. If that's the case and you can't enjoy what's on offer here, you really are a Grinch. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
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