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