Jeremy Udden's Plainville

Childhood reflections are common enough for those getting on in years, but it’s not often that a youngish thirtysomething pines for days gone by, and probably even less often that the results of such wistfulness can genuinely claim eloquence. Saxophonist Udden, a New Englander by birth and Brooklynite by choice, finds ways to have that kind of sentiment wax persuasive, however. If The Past Seems So Bright is a meditation (Udden’s word) on growing up in the rural nowheresville between Providence and Boston. And quite a bucolic childhood it must have been. Using banjo, 12-string guitar, pump organ, Wurlitzer, bass and drums – as well as his soft-spoken alto – the bandleader comes up with a fetching program that employs just as many folk music motifs as it does jazz strategies.


Placing smart interplay in the service of quaint themes, Plainville gladly walks through doors previously opened by Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell. Melodic jousting; simple, repeated patterns; lots of gliding rhythms. This is music that invests in small moments, where a demure sax trill can convey a near cinematic event. “New Dress,” marked by Brandon Seabrook’s genteel banjo picking and Pete Rende’s gurgling Rhodes, begins in a hush and only picks up the slightest momentum. Riding the placid groove is Udden’s horn, full of West Coast cool’s rounded corners, and enticing in its luminous lyricism. The minimalist “Bethel,” with Nathan Blehar singing wordlessly in unison with the boss’s soprano, is a hymn that Longfellow might find redemptive.


Happily, the band has a number of ways to explore its interests. The pensive crawl of “Sad Eyes,” is designed differently than its mates, giving everyone, especially Seabrook and his momentarily squally guitar, a chance to entice. Courageous, it’s a stark opus that captivates by stressing negative space. Udden must have very vivid memories of the wind whipping through the fields in those Massachusetts nature preserves.



JIM MACNIE - TONE AUDIO

Listen to the first few minutes of “Sad Eyes,” on the saxophonist Jeremy Udden’s new record “If the Past Seems So Bright” (Sunnyside). You’ll notice things so peculiar and unresolved you might not know where to stop. The tempo’s unnervingly slow — about 40 beats per minute, dripped out with single, rugged hits on kick and snare drum — and Mr. Udden himself doesn’t come in for nearly a minute and a half, playing the melody. Then a couple of gorgeous, dramatic solos, played by Pete Rende on a Fender Rhodes keyboard and Brandon Seabrook on electric guitar, take over. Mr. Udden’s own solo, toward the end of the song’s 11 minutes, amounts to one long concluding murmur. Who’s running this show? Plainville’s music is decentralized, band-wise, and all over the place category-wise, imagining new kinds of country and folk and pop. It seems influenced by the clean, bold composing style of Eivind Opsvik, the band’s bassist, but over all sounds as new as anything I’ve heard from a jazz group this year. - NEW YORK TIMES

Take Jeremy Udden's If the Past Seems So Bright (Sunnyside), the second album from his band Plainville (named for his Massachusetts home town). Udden is an NEC grad, an alto and soprano saxophonist with a strong streak of Lee Konitz lyricism, who served a good stretch with Boston's Either/Orchestra. But with Plainville he's begun to identify himself more with indie rock ("Throwing Lester Young and the Pixies into the same house and seeing if they can live together," he says in his press material).

Like the Blade Fellowship, Udden favors long, arching, orchestral structures. When he — or one of his crew — comes in for a solo, it could be improvised, or it could be a written transitional passage. He varies the textures with a mix of banjo, electric guitar, Fender Rhodes, vintage Prophet synth, Wurlitzer piano, acoustic bass, and drums. It's a warm sound, downhome in an odd way. As if the Band, after fading like ghosts into the mists of Saugerties, had re-emerged all these years later as an instrumental indie-jazz band in Brooklyn.

Udden isn't afraid to take things slow. On tunes like "Sad Eyes" (the album opener) or "Film," drummer RJ Miller lays down a slow, slow thump-and-thwack rhythm. It recalls something Udden told me a few years ago, about how he likes Miller because he has the patience to do "the same thing" through a whole song and not feel the jazz drummer's compulsion to comment musically on everything that's going on around him Which, in its own sweet time, is plenty. Over that beat, Udden sets his worn, hymn-like chords, introducing bits of gorgeous urban neurosis with watery guitar distortion or fidgety banjo from Brandon Seabrook. A tune like "Hammer" opens with a downright sprightly "cowboy" electric guitar shuffle. But this isn't just instrumental rock. The kind of dancing Udden and keyboarist Pete Rende do around each other on "Leland" — with its big chanka-chanka guitar rhythm and bassist Eivind Opsvik's jazz lilt — could only come from jazzbos. And on a piece like guitarist Nathan Blehar's "Thomas," Udden himself is at his lyrical best, spinning out an endlessly evolving alto line. This is carefully arranged music with an unruly streak — edgy, melancholy, but also at peace with itself. There even are a couple of modest, attractive vocals (from Blehar and Justin Keller). Is it jazz? Well, it's not not jazz.

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/121111-plainville-james-farm-and-the-infrared-band/#ixzz1RLYC505g


Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/121111-plainville-james-farm-and-the-infrared-band/#ixzz1RLXzS2An
- BOSTON PHOENIX

Saxophonist Jeremy Udden says he started his band as a meditation on growing up in Plainville, and that the quintet’s second album, “If the Past Seems So Bright,’’ is about the idea of returning home. But the music is so much more than that. Udden is carving out new territory with this project, which folds folk, country, and rock into the jazz tradition. Udden, who plays alto and soprano sax as well as clarinet, feels less like a soloist than a singer whose voice happens to be a reed instrument. His tone is soft and restrained, even when those around him rock the backbeat, as they do on “Leland’’ and “Stone Free.’’ The folklike “New Dress,’’ with Brandon Seabrook opening on unaccompanied banjo, evokes rural America via an optimistic chord progression and moody playing. “Sad Eyes,’’ the 11-minute ballad that opens the album, shocks with its simplicity. Together the tune’s components — R.J. Miller’s slow, unchanging rock beat using only bass drum and snare; Eivind Opsvik’s upright bass; Pete Rende’s plaintive electric piano; Seabrook’s stretching-out guitar solo; Udden’s ruminative alto — are nothing less than hypnotic. (Out next week) - BOSTON GLOBE

Toward the wee hours of the morning, the streets were quiet, the audience was dwindling and this was the most appropriate group to close the night set up on stage at Homage Skatepark. Saxophonist Jeremy Udden's group Plainville allowed the weary audience to mentally leave New York for a brief moment. Made up of keyboardist Leo Genovese, drummer RJ Miller, bassist Eivind Opsvik and guitarist Ryan Scott, this music is part of the aesthetic practiced by musicians like Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny: a painting of small-town life and optimism, mixed with Southern gothic maturity, folk song simplicity, and garage rock pathos.

Plainville's writing took rock and folk die casting, and colored it with an advanced harmonic and rhythmic sense. The composition "Red Coat" walked around different key centers that had a playfulness as well as a gentleness. "Hammer" was a strummed folk tune with a pulse from Opsvik and Miller that thumped like a heartbeat and "Thomas" featured the steely twang of Scott's resonator guitar under Udden's alto. Compositions like "Sad Eyes" turned up the heat a bit, with Scott churning out melodic riffs with the same knowledge of the medium as jazz musicians have about theirs.

Udden's sound was a steampunk arrangement of ideas, as if Lee Konitz were reimagined as a folk hero, with lines that flowed in effortless threads. When the music picked up intensity and thrust itself into garage rock wails, Udden and the band stayed composed, too at peace to get ahead of themselves. Even Genovese's ear-bending outside harmonies seemed within the calm of the storm. Udden, face obscured by the shadows of the skatepark, looked at the audience and said, "It's 2:00 am and we're still here." The statement ended up not being just a thank you, but rather pointing out the dedication and resilience of the festival and its participants. - ALL ABOUT JAZZ . com

If there are two instruments that seldom occupy the same stage (much less the same musical ZIP Code) it’s the banjo and the Fender Rhodes, a vintage electric piano heard in the hands of Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder. Add in a saxophone and some flinty electric guitar and you’ve either got a jam session prank or Jeremy Udden’s Plainville, a richly engrossing project from the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston saxophonist that finds new ground between jazz, instrumental rock and folk.

Though the instrumentation sounds like a gadget play, the elements come together with remarkable grace, particularly on the slow-burning "Thomas" and "New Dress," which rides a delicately spun melody from banjo player Brandon Seabrook (who fronts the experimental-minded group Seabrook Power Plant) that weaves through Udden's breathy saxophone and flickering keys by Pete Rende.

The submerged guitar echoes rising out of the sprawling opener "Sad Eyes" and the spacey keys driving the irresistible "Leland" show Udden's crew is just as comfortable carving out room in indie rock's territory, but jazz fans should be equally taken with this caliber of invention. - LOS ANGELES TIMES

The soprano and alto saxophonist Jeremy Udden reaches for rusticity and sincerity on his warm new album, “Plainville” (Fresh Sound New Talent), and sometimes he finds both… - NEW YORK TIMES

"Melodic, ruminative, nostalgic and fresh at the same time." - SEATTLE TIMES

"Plainville is an appealingly dreamy roots-jazz combo, driven by Pete Rende’s pump organ and Brandon Seabrook’s banjo" - TIME OUT NEW YORK

"A pluralistic stylistic orientation (rock, free, folk build upon the underlying jazz) Udden has created a resolutely new music where eclecticism and personal experience play an important role." — JAZZMAN (FRANCE) - JAZZMAN (FRANCE)

"With his beautiful, round soprano tone, saxophonist Udden lends a haunting sheen to tunes spanning the soothingly melodic to the jaggedly free." - MODERN DRUMMER

"…a distinctive soprano and alto saxophonist with a gorgeous tone and a subtly personal lyricism… Udden ranges from the linear grace of Keith Jarrett-like songs, through equally melodic jazz/rock to some very focused free playing. Somehow, despite his gentle approach, his sheer musical presence imposes a kind of unity on what emerges…Udden lays down a marker as a player who deserves to be much better known." - THE IRISH TIMES

"Some of the freshest sounding jazz to appear in some time." - THE VANCOUVER PROVINCE

Plainville (FSNT-330) "This gifted alto saxophonist-composer with the gorgeous tone follows through on his eccentric Frisell-ian vision with quiet, understated conviction...may be more suited to the indie-rock/alt-country environs of SXSW in Austin then the Village Vanguard, there is still some kind of jazz happening."
- JAZZ TIMES

I had seriously been sleeping on this Jeremy Udden character. Stream his 'Plainville' in full at his site: http://www.jeremyudden.com /PJ

--the entrance of the rim shot snare pattern, soon followed by the leader's soprano saxophone, on "695" from Jeremy Udden, Plainville (Fresh Sound New Talent) - NPR'S A BLOG SUPREME