Terry Gordon

Review by J Hunter (Nippertown)

In hindsight, I may have done the Arch Stanton Quartet a disservice by referring to their stripped-out underground sound as “garage-band jazz.” All us grey-haired rockers can wax poetic about about garage bands like the Music Explosion, the Count Five and – my favorite – the Standells serving up two minutes-and-change of nasty, uncultured excellence…but the Electric Prunes andthe Count Five never had a chance to experience sophomore slump because they dropped out after the first semester! Well, the Arch Stanton Quartet is back with Blues For Soli, and there are two bits of good news: First, no sophomore slump here; and second, Greater Nippertown's musical ambassadors are STILL as nasty as they want to be!

It was their short-but-intense tour of Egypt in 2013 that helped birth the disc's first four tracks (also known as the Lady Egypt Suite), and there's a definite intensity to the opening track “Kofta.” The introduction has this swirling, almost drunken quality to it that makes you wonder, “How bad will this trip be?” Then drummer Steven Partyka hits this sweet groove straight out of Freddie Hubbard's “Red Clay,” and the ASQ is serving up the funk their way; that involves mixing whip-tight guitar from Roger Noyes with open, almost snarling trumpet from Terry Gordon (who is SO on his game throughout this date), while bassist Chris Macchia bows a counter that evokes Frankenstein skanking down the street while sipping from a bottle of schnapps.

For something kinda-sorta different, we get the breezy swinger “Zamalek” (named for a high-end neighborhood in Cairo), led by Gordon's pedal-to-the-metal solo and Partyka's flag-waving Scot Amendola imitation, quickly followed by another musical left turn: “Groovin' At The Azur,” a literal fever dream from Gordon that meshes East and West quite spookily. The trip ends with the title track, dedicated to the character that kept the quartet on the road and laughing all the way through. While most of this music is brand spanking new, Gordon reaches deep into his songbook for the funked-up cruiser “Striped Water.” That's preceded by two Noyes compositions: The dark, dark ballad “Aphorisms” and the slow swamp skanker “Dungoode Bayou.” Noyes' pulsing “Floodgills” would have made a great closer, but as with their 2012 debut Along For The Ride, the ASQ finish off Soli with a coda of its own, the pensive “Convection Zone.”

While the Arch Stanton Quartet haven't strayed from the no-frills, damn-right vibe that had me eating up Along with two spoons and a straw, they are definitely plumbing deeper depths on Soli, with barely-visible tweaks that speak of streamlining and (dare I say it?) polish.

LOCAL HERO AWARD (CD DIVISION)
J Hunter (Nippertown)

Arch Stanton Quartet - Blues For Soli (WEPA Records)
After creating a sound on their 2012 debut Along For The Ride that nobody else in greater Nippertown had made, the next goal for the Arch Stanton Quartet was to conjure up another set of kickass originals while avoiding Sophomore Slump. As some guy who likes to paint his feet in the bathtub nowadays might have said: Mission Accomplished. The second half of Blues For Soli says the Stanton Quartet could have made this happen without their whirlwind tour of Egypt in 2013. That said, the tone that's set by the four monster tunes contained in the opening Lady Egypt Suite is about as blood-and-guts tough as you're going to get. It's still “garage-band jazz,” in that the ASQ is a no-frills outfit with a license to kill; however, there are layers of richness to this music that were only hinted at on Ride. What the future brings for the ASQ is anyone's guess, but as far as I'm concerned, the guy in the bathtub said it all: “Bring it on!”