bill nace/chris corsano/paul flaherty: these

'Wherein we come upon three visceralists who have been collaborating for years - innumerable instances in a roulette wheel of settings -- finally shacking up in a studio and fashioning a proper trio record. Glory be. Let's listen in-- 'These.' It's a phrase that never gets started, and an apt title for this record, which right off bolts from the barn and burns so brightly it nearly gets away from you by the time you're done twisting your head around looking for whoever it was that left the door open. 'He asked me when I planned to come back. Always, I said.' Nace's guitar mines savage depths, egging on the propulsive swing of Flaherty and Corsano. The results are as beastly as the heart itself. Swing. Bounce. Joust. Jab. Uppercut. Flutter. Wink. Sneer. They all play with anguish and ecstatic rupture -- the frustrating joy of pushing an instrument to its limits, fashioning a necessary and brutal needlepoint. They move with all the otherworldly elegance and mania of moths at a lamp show. The music asks no specific questions, but wrenches open a space for all manner of questions -- this is one of art's most vital functions! It deals in shades, no matter how sharp the apparent angle. Check out the second track on the first side: the solemn bells of Bill's guitar signal not so much a funeral, but a new dawn after a tragedy. Flaherty's saxophone sounds innocent, almost tentative at first, but as Chris' drums chime in, Paul starts to wrench the fabric loose. The track builds into a fierce and alien vista, charting a territory all its own -- a simmering judgement. It becomes hard to talk about. Didn't you ever try to eat your own tail in the midday sun? No? These three, whose veins are coursing straight through with a nuanced emotional lexicon and the smarts to harness it, have given us a record that expands potential with each listen." --Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA 2017