In the West, improvisation tends to be built around the intricate harmony complexity of jazz, with players laying out the melody, outlining the chord changes, and then blasting off with freewheeling improvisations designed to show off their individuality and personal prowess. In America, soloing is like signing your name across the stars, writ large beside the heroes and immortals. Improvisation can be a group activity, though, a collective exercise for cracking through mundane reality to find the shining manna of nature, the elements, and the ties that bind us together and make us human.
On Are Possible, the Nathan Bowles Trio outline alternate forms of American improvisation, incorporating the minimalist hillbilly minimalism of Henry Flynt to create a mighty hybrid of cosmic Americana and spiritual jazz. The final result ends up somewhere between the subtle collectivism of the Necks and Nathan Bowles’ alma mater, Pelt. It’s a freewheeling, intricate blend of hypnotic clawhammer banjo, breathy flutes, wheezing harmonium, funky drumming, and Casey Toll’s throbbing, thumping double bass. It’s as warm and mesmerizing as a bed of embers in a dark forest – if you stop and pay attention.
Are Possible is not showy music. It doesn’t get up in your face and scream and holler for your attention. Barring a one-bar drum rave-up, belying the adrenaline secretly racing through the record’s veins, the opener “Dapple” quickly settles into a mystical four-chord pulse. Rather than continually bringing in new elements like characters on a soap opera, “Dapple” deals in subtlety and nuance, the way Rex McMurry shuffles around the meter while Bowles’ banjo thrums a hypnotic throb. Rather than showing off, Are Possible is more like the work of master artisans with zero need to tell you how good they are. The evidence is right there in front of you like how a master potter’s reds might capture a flaming sunset.
You’ll want to take your time and ponder Are Possible‘s subtleties, as they’re the key to unlocking its mysteries. It doesn’t need to be dissected to feel its transcendental spirit, though. You’ll be served just as well by letting Bowles, McMurry, and Toll wash over you like a mighty, lazy river flanked by sunflowers. You’ll want to laze down that river over and over, again and again, turning off your mind while relaxing beneath cornflower blue skies.
The more times you take that trip, the more details stand out. You’ll notice how McMurry seems to hit everywhere except the downbeat on the album’s second track and first single, “The Ternions”. You’ll see the satisfying similarity between Toll’s bassline on the second single, “Our Air”, and “Mr. P.C.” himself, Paul Chambers, and how so many different ways there are to approach modal music. Finally, you’ll find unlikely connections between American roots, Egyptian folk, and Moroccan devotional Sufi music on the album closer “Aims”, helping you to realize the similarities between a backyard campfire jam in Northern California and the visionary impulses of ecstatic music from all over the world. We’re more similar than different, after all.
Are Different is a high achievement from a group of musicians with impressive pedigrees. Between the three of them, the Nathan Bowles Trio have worked with nearly every major purveyor of trance-inducing psychedelic folk music of the last 25 years. It’s still a standout achievement in the annals of the New Weird America – belong beside seminal records from artists like Pelt or Jack Rose – even if they’d never say it themselves. Somebody’s got to say it. Following hot on the heels of the magical new collaboration between Six Organs of Admittance and Shackleton, Drag City are the source for Cosmic Americana in 2024.