Tuatara
Trading With The Enemy
[Epic]
Rating: 7.8
There's nothing more Rock Star than the supergroup. The name says it
all: here you have a band whose members are so important that calling
them a "side project" or simply a "group" is not descriptive enough.
Only the comic book prefix "super" will do.
It's mostly the fault of music journalists, because as critics, we're not
only the most avid readers of the rock 'n' roll comic book, we're the
writers, and we like to think that our rock heroes are more human than
human. So whether the term is fitting or not, we'll always refer to
bands like this as "supergroups."
In the case of Tuatara, it's both fitting and tellingly overboard.
Membership of the experimental jazz combo definitely qualifies them as a
supergroup-- R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, the Screaming Trees' Barrett Martin,
Luna's Justin Harwood, Los Lobos' Steve Berlin, the Young Fresh Fellows'
Scott McCaughey and several Seattle area musicians-- but the music
Tuatara creates does anything but draw attention to itself in
"supergroup" fashion.
Tuatara is more like a gathering of friends in a smoky nightclub, when
everyone's a little loose and ready for some improv. Trading With the
Enemy sounds like an impromptu jazz group in the tradition of the
Quintet (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach and
Bud Powell) or any of the other one-off performances of jazz greats
around mid-century. There's a freedom to these tracks that makes even
the limber tone of the members' home bands a bit stodgy by comparison.
Yet Trading With the Enemy is nothing if not a polished
recording. The recurring patterns of the vibes and horns feel
more cinematically scripted than freely struck and blown. And the sonic
depth of tracks like "Smuggler's Cove" and "Angel and the Ass" (whose
steel drum and acoustic guitar dance sparkles like light on water)
certainly weren't created on the spot.
Of course, that's the charm of Tuatara. It takes only one listen to
realize that you're dealing with some major players. But the lyricless,
issueless, seamless arrangements are communal rather than pretentious,
and they're certainly not "super"-- at least not in the way we've learned
to judge it.
-Shan Fowler