Triage

[Captain Hate]

On Monday May 5, Triage played the Beachland Ballroom's Tavern for a crowd of 20-30 people. The evening started off late (9:15 versus 8:30) with a local group, Vernacular. That's a pretty good name for a band and they seemed to be three pretty nice guys. That's the extent of the positive things that I'm going to say about Vernacular; I made it through, I think, three songs before I went outside for some fresh air for the duration of their performance. Imagine alternately the Chicago Underground Trio and Pain Killer; but without any talent. I kid you not; I have as much musical talent as these clowns showed.

After that was over, Triage hit the stage just after 10:30 and launched into a song "Glass" off of their new release Twenty Minute Cliff. I don't know if it was the relief of finally hearing what I came to hear or what, but this struck me as the best cut of the hour-long set. Glass, like a lot of their other uptempo originals, doesn't stray too far from the Vandermark 5 synthesis of Ornette/Cherry/Rollins influences. Rempis is a very accomplished soloist on both alto and tenor; he has a crisp tone on both horns but employs a bit more vibrato on the tenor and uses its lower octave effectively. He's tall and rangy and plays not at all hunched over; kind of like how Hemphill used to play the alto. In his solos he tosses off rapid-fire ideas that always seem to work. Tim Daisy was good; but not quite as good as I remember him when he played with Vandermark. Everybody was in top form during Glass; at one point Rempis sat out while Daisy and the bass player, Jason Ajemian, hit a nice rhythmic groove as Ajemian took drumsticks to his string and the body of his bass; it sounds hokey but it works. Unfortunately after that a lot of Ajemian's more normal playing didn't work so well for me; there were times that I found myself tuning out of his meandering solos. In the ensemble playing, he was very solid. The songs themselves were effective; but the most compelling playing after Glass (and I don't remember any of the other titles except one, also from the new cd, Sun Dawgs) was when Rempis was playing. By the time they were finished, pretty much everybody was satisfied.

I can't give this as unqualified a recommendation as I did Matt Wilson's Quartet, but if you like Vandermark's music, you should like Triage.