Avant-garders Xiu Xiu dug their way through history on this one. Jamie Stewart—Xiu Xiu’s frontman, founder, leader, etc. —looked at jazz legend Nina Simone for inspiration, as he and a team of jazz players deliver a collection of jazz duels and whispered lyrics that serve as reworks of cuts from Nina’s deep, 50-year catalog. Jazz is all about free spirit and pushing musicians to their limits (just ask Guitar George), and Nina definitely delivers just enough free spirit to keep it fighting through avant-garde’s cage.
The spirit of jazz meanders its way through Nina. Stewart’s partners lay out drumbeats and saxophone battles throughout the album. Though lacking in the coherence of Simone’s bands from through the ages, Xiu Xiu’s contributors hand out impressive fills that drive the backbone of this experiment. Songs like “Flo Me La” and “Just Say I Love Him” carry with them the improvisations and skills born from jazz.
The avant-garde adventure is even given solid structure with “Pirate Jenny.” A cut from 1964’s Nina Simone in Concert, a guitar is brought in to carry the rhythm as Stewart and company jam through a song that once served as a warning of a “black freighter’s” coming. They don’t quite match Nina’s more foreboding, stripped-down take; but there’s few who can.
The most durable complaint against Nina would have to be Stewart’s singing itself. He gave himself the task of handling Simone’s unmatchable vocals, a challenge to even the most gifted of vocalists. Stewart’s way around this was the album’s most experimental concoction: a wet, groaning whisper that makes much of Nina such a difficult listen. At times, it dragged on the rest of the album, giving the free jazz of Nina its only cage.
There’s freedom to jazz, just as there’s liberation in the experimental and the avant-garde. Individually, they can be liberating. Together, though, they can break down. It’s not a collapse, but one can find itself constrained by the other. As is the case with Nina; the more experimental textures and untraditional vocals hold back what might be the most original take on jazz this year.
Rating: B-
