Trumpeter
Jaimie Branch
died suddenly in 2022 at age 39, just as her career was taking off. It was a tragic loss, made all the more poignant by the arrival of her posthumous third solo album with her
Fly or Die
ensemble, 2023's thrilling
Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
. Although forever tethered to the Chicago creative music scene where she started out,
Branch
studied at both the New England Conservatory in Boston and Baltimore's Towson University before settling in Brooklyn. It was there in 2017 that she launched
, a group whose dynamic sound balanced adventurous free jazz soloing with woody string harmonies, Latin grooves, and atonal group improvisations. The group's lineup solidified on 2019's
Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise
, with
joined by bassist
Jason Ajemian
, cellist
Lester St. Louis
, and drummer
Chad Taylor
. That album also found
drawing upon her punk influences, crafting several fiery protest anthems that featured her singing. With
, she takes all of what came before and pushes it to the limit, crafting a dynamic punk-jazz album underpinned by the groups' textured acoustic chamber group improv and joyous street-party energy. There's a psychedelic rock quality to much of the album, as on the propulsive "Burning Grey," where
St. Louis
and
Ajemian
play shimmering bowed chords against
Taylor
's clattering klezmer-rock rhythm as
whoops and hollers in a kind of existential stream of consciousness, singing "I wish I had the time, I wish I had the time, I wish I had the time of my lifeâ?¦" That the song sounds like the
Art Ensemble of Chicago
fronted by punk icon
Patti Smith
feels intentional and speaks to the broad influences at play in
's work. She also takes a stylistically open approach on the instrumental pieces, bringing together Krautrock-sounding keyboards, quavering, cinematic strings, and Afro-Latin drums on "Borealis Dancing," while "Baba Louie" starts out like a Caribbean boat dance party replete with marimba before melting into a ghostly cloud of flute, vocals, and horn howls. Impressively, all of these disparate sounds hold together, even when
embraces a genre in its most traditional form as on the country-folk ballad "The Mountain." A cover of
the Meat Puppets
' "Comin' Down," the song is spare in its conception, marked by twangy vocal harmonies and mournful bowed basslines as well as a lyrical muted solo from
. It is a masterclass in how to make a cover song your own, turning the punk-country classic into a rustic, elegiac rumination on how the journey towards spiritual enlightenment is never straightforward. Even at her most D.I.Y. moments,
always seemed to be reaching for something bigger than herself, bridging musical styles and conjuring symphonies with just her horn, a bass, cello, and drums.
is both a pinnacle of that bold creative musical vision and a tantalizing spark of what might have been. ~ Matt Collar