Heat On is the Chicago-based group formed by drummer Lily Finnegan with tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson Jr., altoist Fred Jackson Jr., and bassist Nick Macri playing both upright and electric on this self-titled release, offering six compositions by Finnegan, including a three-part suite. While it’s the drummer’s debut album, she has experience playing with Ken Vandermark, James Brandon Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sarah Clauson, gabby fluke-mogul, and many others. Heat On is an impressive set that’s hopefully just the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. It’s out now on compact disc and digital through Cuneiform Records.
Lily Finnegan has yet to accumulate an extensive discography, but what’s out there with her name on it has reinforced her talent as an instrumentalist, and now Heat On establishes her compositional abilities. Finnegan can let it fly in a free context, but her debut illuminates her preference for combining abstraction and compositional structure, and to pinpoint, Finnegan’s stated appreciation for grooves.
One could call Finnegan an inside-outside specialist, but there’s a lot more happening across Heat On’s succinct runtime than mere variations upon the now well-established approach of launching outward into the deep weeds from a sturdy melodic bedrock and then touching back down. The album’s opener, “Green Milk,” for example, dives into a rich free-bop sensibility that’s reminiscent of but not overly indebted to Ornette Coleman’s quartet recordings for Atlantic Records.
The playing by Finnegan’s group is expert without being flashy. Edward Wilkerson is best known for leading the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians-affiliated 8 Bold Souls, a unit whose albums include Last Option, released in 2000 by Thrill Jockey, but Wilkerson has more recently recorded with Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few and earlier this year with the Christopher Dammann Sextet on their self-titled LP on Out Of Your Head Records.
Fellow AACM member Fred Jackson has played in a variety of Chicago-based groups including the AACM ensembles New Generations and Great Black Music, the Mai Sugimoto Quartet, and his own band Erudition Project. Bassist Nick Macri has contributed to a ton of recordings spanning the spectrum from jazz to rock to contemporary folk, a stylistic breadth he shares with Finnegan, who plays in the punk outfits Deodorant and Cucuy.
Heat On is a focused affair. When Macri switches to electric bass on “RSJ,” it’s not to plunge into standard-issue funky fusion but to achieve a rough congruence with the harmolodic sound that the song’s titular inspiration, Ronald Shannon Jackson, helped build as part of Coleman’s 1970s band Prime Time. “Inverted Spoon” is an achier piece, more rooted in the Fire Music of the 1960s, that flows very nicely into the warmth of the subtle rhythm section showcase “Rimrock,” although Wilkerson and Jackson do get their licks in.
The album as a groove vessel is most pronounced at the beginning of the “Beltline” suite, but there is nothing stylistically schizophrenic occurring as Finnegan and Marci lock into a tandem energy and the horns soar. The second part of the site is looser and moodier, though by the end another groove is established as Marci swings back into motion for part three and everybody gets back into the pocket
The intense but unharried explorations of “The Great” close a fine record where the punk connection is most deeply articulated through the no-nonsense leanness of the compositions and how they combine into an appreciable sum. As said up top, let’s hope this is not the last we’ll hear from Heat On.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
