‘No One Gets Saved’ – new album from Bag of Bones

No One Gets Saved by Bag of Bones (Rick Simpson/Riley Stone-Lonegan/Oli Hayhurst/Will Glaser) was released on 577 Records on 31 May. Liam Noble was originally commissioned to write a liner note for the album, which was not published (*).

Here are Liam’s thoughts about the album:

Each to their own, as they say, but the way I think of jazz is a bit like the opening of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”, the green mown lawns eventually revealing the violence of nature, the scurrying beetles a mass of tiny movements keeping our pristine gardens alive. Jazz, and improvised music in general, runs on a certain level of violence, good-natured and knockabout, that fuels its affable and non-committal exterior.

Think of all the American sitcoms where the music between scenes is required to say nothing. Frasier’s “Smoked Salmon and Scrambled Eggs” is an intentionally well-healed satire on blues suffering, whilst Seinfeld, a ”show about nothing”, finds its perfect musical complement in some horrific slapped bass vacuity. These are both works of genius, both employing music simply because there must be something in the gaps, something that doesn’t imbue the action, or lack of it, with any connotation at all. The real and lasting value of jazz is dirty, unpredictable, tender and full of aggro and incident.

To enjoy it, you need to listen closer. Sticking with the nature motif, there often seems nothing as boring as a garden, but Lynch was right: it’s actually a huge theatre of conflict and activity. Manicured lawns and sculpted trees only hold their form at a distance. Pick off that tree bark, you’ll find swarming ants.

These four musicians are round the back of the house getting mud under their fingernails. Everything is moving. The tunes are all about what might come next, avoiding the kind of titles that might distract you into a story before it’s happened. Titles like “Bastard Gentlemen” and “Chinny Reckon” can mean something different every night, “Onwards And Upwards” describes what actually happens in the bassline and “Albie” is left unexplained, and all the better for it. Everyone here writes for the band, and the inevitable diversity of approaches pushes the weight of coherence on to the improvisations themselves. The tunes are built to be mercilessly kicked, inquisitively prodded, lovingly caressed and brutally dissected, with the advantage that no one gets hurt. Riley’s tenor bursts with life, his many and varied influences coalescing into a single captivating voice that feels strong without being overpowering. Rick’s piano work steps around all the usual jazz clichés, delving into unexplored cracks and crevices of the instrument with fleet fingered ease. As a rhythm section, Oli and Will make a pretty cantankerous team, seemingly barging their way out of their supposed roles as “timekeepers” with sharp elbows, but they also operate with a rare delicacy when it’s called for. I’ve been on the stand with both of them, and the range they can command from icy calm to full on rage jumps right out of the speakers here.

Like the characters portrayed in Lynch’s opening scene, we often like things smoothed out and respectable, but all the fun is in the dirt. If jazz is dead (and it’s had more than its share of media-fuelled obituaries and resurrections) then it’s this lacklustre sheen that has died, the vaguely pleasing chords that fill our awkward silences. The clickety click of insect noise remains, and we all know that come the nuclear holocaust, it’s the cockroaches that will survive.

(*) It is published here courtesy of Liam Noble and Rick Simpson.