Trichotomy: The Gentle War – review

3 / 5 stars
(Naim Jazz)

With last year's Variations album, this decade-old Australian piano trio (touring the UK next month) showed that the innovations of such popular groundbreakers in the field as EST and the Bad Plus offer plenty of room for creative expansion. The Gentle War takes up where its predecessor left off, though it doesn't amplify its music with strings and horns as Variations briefly did, and it once again reveals the long-nurtured group empathy that makes its constant shuffling of tempos and motifs unfold seamlessly, and start and stop on a dime. At the outset, damped-string tappings turn into catchy keyboard hooks and twisting melodies uniting Sean Foran's piano and Patrick Marchisella's agile basslines unfold over brittle, metronomic drums. Big, EST-like anthemic buildups swell and disperse, while the title track rocks over a driving drum groove and interrupts itself with abruptly explosive cymbal crashes, Shut Up recalls the Bad Plus in its domineering piano chords and crunching drumwork, and episodes of brooding melancholy testify to the trio's lyrical strengths. It'll be a bit tightly disciplined for some jazzers, and EST and the Bad Plus exhibited wilder diversions, but Trichotomy is an accomplished and contemporarily harmonious outfit.