DAVE DOUGLAS
A THOUSAND EVENINGS
BMG/RCA Victor

Similar Enchantments: 3 Leg Torso, Masada, Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain

Dave Douglas' Charms of the Night Sky
Old Church,
1422 SW 11th Ave.,
222-2031 8 pm
Monday, Jan. 15 $15

Despite sweeping the Jazz Journalist Awards this past year and being selected Jazz Times' Artist of the Year, Dave Douglas is still best known as John Zorn's terse trumpet foil in Masada. It's a shame, because that's only one sliver of the guy's forest-sized output. In the past couple of years, the trumpeter-composer-bandleader has been clearcutting the avant-jazz scene and making kindling of the hurdles of jazz's notions of structure and improvisation in the process. Best of all, he's got an appetite for a genuine New Music hybrid and retches at thoughts of formalism.

Charms--with bassist Greg Cohen, violinist Mark Feldman and accordion master Guy Klucevsek--may be Douglas' quietest group, but it's also his most genre-blurring. Traveling from Eastern Europe to Argentina to American classical minimalism, Charms does the gypsy thing with jazz bite. From the dusky title cut (pure Miles misterioso) through the brooding "Words for a Loss" to a dirgelike cover of Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger," the mood is mostly sparse. But there's spice, too. The two-part suite "The Branches" is the kind of yin-yang structural alchemy Douglas excels at--turning a tribute to klezmer great Dave Tarras into a free exercise. His suite for Mingus pianist Jaki Byard begins like Steve Reich and ends in buoyant Monk tones. And "On Our Way Home" sounds like a Turkish Mariachi. It's an aural landscape that zips by like mileposts at 70 mph, but it's fresh, alive and oh so welcome in this age
of schlock. Bill Smith

THE PLACES

THE AUTOPILOT KNOWS YOU BEST
Absolutely Kosher

When I think of you, I think of: Emmylou Harris' work with Daniel Lanois, Elliott Smith's work without Sony

The Places, The Operacycle, Little Wings
Medicine Hat,
1834 NE Alberta St.,
778-7700
9:30 pm Friday, Jan. 12 Cover

When singer-songwriters known for open-heart introspection and bare-bones arrangements form bands, it usually spells trouble with a capital Uh-Oh. Thus trepidation is a natural response to The Autopilot Knows You Best, the debut album from the Places, a rotating local collective that spotlights the stark lamentations of indie-folk chanteuse Amy Annelle. Nervous questions arise: Will a studio- and band-augmented Annelle indulge in too much multitracked trickery? Will she swamp herself in swooning string arrangements and oceans of reverb? Or, worst of all, will she suddenly try to rock out?

Thankfully, the answers are no, no, and no. Autopilot adheres tightly to Annelle's skeletal songwriting formula, her whispery, frayed-velveteen voice still the primary focus, her repetitive and minimal acoustic strumming driving the melody forward from behind. The rest of the Places then delicately layer their contributions--a weeping accordion or organ here, a tentative tambourine or drum rhythm there--underneath, careful never to overshadow Annelle's soft vocal poetics. The studio's embellishing abilities do surface at times, as disembodied snippets of dialogue or lost radio transmissions float into the mix as mood-setting additions. But these merely increase the sensation that we are watching the Places assemble a sad scrapbook of tender lyrical ruminations stretched over loosely knit musical fabric. Rambling but never lost, Autopilot isn't an album you listen to, per se, but something you merely let happen. John Graham