Pianist Elliot Galvin delivered an eccentric homage to bebop, Broadway musicals, Margate’s Dreamland amusement park and more on the 2014 album debut of his trio with bassist Tom McCredie and drummer Simon Roth – a miscellany of warped blues, gothic clankings and bold groove-bending that brought him Europe-wide acclaim.
Punch is an even better set of originals, with the single cover – Mack the Knife – reclaimed as a doomy deep-chord march with the famous theme perkily plinking away on a glockenspiel. Fast, knotty free-jazz piano and then bleepy accordion drive Hurdy Gurdy, Galvin plays quarter-tone bebop on a DIY-modified melodica, and a Beatles tribute on the casually whistled Cosy that was apparently inspired by A Day In the Life, but develops a low-end ostinato more reminiscent of Lady Madonna. Packed with pop, jazz and contemporary classical references, it’s typically whimsical-sounding Galvin music (there’s a real Punch and Judy show sample in the opener) but steered by an unblinking artistic focus that has nothing whimsical about it at all.
