One of my favorite albums of 2016 was Real Enemies by Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, an ambitious, big jazz record that takes American conspiratorial thinking as its motivating theme. (It’s true: we’ll make up our secret societies if we have to.) It has held up really well, and it’s worth hunting down a copy.
Argue’s group performed this weekend at Columbia’s Miller Theater, and although they didn’t play music from that release, they played some material that builds upon its rich harmonic toolkit. In the first half of the show, Argue explained that he had written “All In” for the late Laurie Frink, who played with the Secret Society on their first album. Fittingly, it featured trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis (whose note-bending is really something) and captures a lot of the enigmatic, almost tenebrous sound of Real Enemies.
A Puckish narrator, Argue noted that the song “Codebreaker” was written to honor the decisive contributions of Alan Turing and that “Transit” was inspired by the now-defunct Fung Wah Bus, the beloved Boston-New York Chinatown shuttle that was a staple of Boston-area undergraduate life. (Speaking not just for myself here, I take it!)
The show’s second half was entirely taken up by an Ellington-inspired forty-minute piece “Tensile Curves.” Lots of great clarinet work by Sam Sadigursky and drumming by Jon Wikan. I was especially captured by the last few minutes—the slow tempo and harmonic material reminded me of, say, a dark take on Bill Evans.
Secret’s out: these guys are good. Catch them if you can.