JAZZ
BY ANDY COWAN
Jaimie Branch
★★★★★
Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War))
INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP
Late trumpeter’s final Fly Or Die album completes trilogy with pizzazz.
Recorded in Nebraska four months before her death last summer, Jaimie Branch’s final foray with bassist Jason Ajemian, cellist Lester St Louis and drummer Chad Taylor finds her super-bassy, minimally-tooled groove machine in peak form. While the positively spooked Burning Grey witnesses her vivid trumpet burrowing into the nooks and crannies of its progressive groove, her Colombian roots poke through the party-hearty propulsion of Baba Louie. More vocally forthright than ever (heartbreakingly so on closer World War), free song titan Fay Victor’s singing lessons pay repeated dividends, as telling melodies cut through the naturalistic style-hopping. In a 2015 interview Branch stressed “I mean every note that I play”. It’s an inescapable truth on this larger than life finale.