Charles Lloyd’s second album for Blue Note features the ascetically passionate sax star and his rhythm section hosting Bill Frisell and his pedal-steel partner Greg Leisz on a programme of folk songs, three Lloyd originals, and guest appearances by Norah Jones and Willie Nelson. Explicit jazz is rare (though the whimsically playful flute/guitar theme of Lloyd’s Ornette-like Of Course of Course is a highlight), but quiet instrumental conversations like the Frisell favourite Shenandoah, a lovely All My Trials and a succinct Abide With Me are spellbinding in their awestruck sax exhortations and gleaming guitar harmonies. Dylan’s Masters of War is a little on-the-nose as a Coltranesque lament, but while Nelson delivers the anti-war song Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream in a candid tremor and Norah Jones sings You Are So Beautiful in a note-bending trance, it’s the long, closing meditation Barche Lamsel that captures the core group at its most reciprocally poetic. Lloyd and Frisell sound like lifelong soulmates.
