Ben LaMar Gay makes music like a really good chef makes a simple meal or a loaf of bread. There are recipes to follow, century-old formulas that can act as guidelines or as moveable boundaries, but cornettist and bandleader Gay knows that it has to be put together with the right ingredients and with a measure of love and attention; otherwise, those old formulas won’t work. Basically, it’s all about constructing something that conforms to its own internal logic but also allows for boundless creativity: everything fits together, and everything feels fresh.
Yowzers’ title track, which opens the album, exemplifies this philosophy. It is only two minutes long and is built around an ostensibly simple vocal refrain. It’s a bluesy, soulful, piano-led gospel piece, hinting at Gay’s background in psychedelic and improvisational jazz and his infatuation with folklore. Beneath it runs a seam of black history, a history of subjugation and celebration. There are comparisons to be made with Matana Roberts’ recent albums, but Gay’s approach allows room alongside the earthly (and earthy) elements for something more cosmic. It’s not music that gets your attention by hitting you around the head with intense juxtapositions, freakouts and sonic blasts; it’s more subtle than that. The building blocks can sometimes feel, gloriously, more like passing clouds.
A Chicago native, Gay has found the perfect home on International Anthem, the city’s most exciting record label. He has assembled a quartet featuring Tommaso Moretti (drums, percussion, voice), Matthew Davis (tuba, piano, bells, voice), and Will Faber (guitar, ngoni, bells, voice), all of whom have significant experience in the Chicago scene and beyond. They really get things moving on The Glorification of Small Victories, recorded live at Chicago’s Palisade Studios. A busy percussive background anchors a soulful, folky vocal before the cornet takes centre stage with a fluttering melody that provides a brief counterpoint to the free jazz honk and wail of tuba and guitar.
When contemporary jazz meets folk song, the tendency is often deconstructive, but Gay encourages a more detailed and ambiguous relationship between the two elements. John, John Henry is a reorganisation of a traditional song that features propulsive drums and twittering synth. Here, for a moment, the aforementioned celebration and subjugation are crystallised; in Gay’s hands, the song can be read as a trenchant critique of the racist-capitalist machine and a defence of black culture and dignity. Even more powerful is For Breezy, dedicated to Jaimie Branch, the New York-based trumpeter who died in 2022. It’s a slow, soulful elegy, influenced by Duke Ellington and waxing lithely from modernist synths to heartbreakingly expressive flugelhorn.
There Inside the Morning Glory, one of the live pieces, sees Gay take on the role of quick-change artist. It proceeds in interlocking sections, an engaging and ever-evolving mosaic. I Am (Bells) has a more controlled sense of evolution, moving serenely but inexorably from Gay’s unaccompanied vocals to a hypnotic, chiming minimalism and a crashing finale of percussion and impassioned vocals recalling Beefheart or Dr John. Promontory is characterised by its space and its sense of restraint but also by a strange, untapped energy that seems to run underneath in the form of a whispered vocal line, and Damn You Cute fuses wobbly electronica with lyrical brass.
Cumulus, the longest piece on Yowzers, one of four recorded live as a quartet, traces a laid-back journey combining the wide-eyed, widescreen wonder of the best spiritual jazz with the nous of contemporary composition. The synths chatter, the percussion pounds and the brass blasts back and forward through time. The use of electronics never seems cold or calculated: Touch glows and gurgles like an undersea volcano. The warped and repeated vocal samples that introduce closer Leave Some For You create a self-contained, confident atmosphere, while Gay’s almost-spoken vocals are conversational and welcoming, as if inviting us to go back to the beginning and listen to the whole album again. And repeated listening is precisely what Yowzers deserves. It is an eclectic and graceful album of great detail and an even greater heart.
Yowzers (June 6th, 2025) International Anthem
Bandcamp: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/yowzers
Streaming: June 26th, 2025