What album are you listening tonight?

[K4680]

Tedeschi Trucks Band

Husband and wife guitar slingers Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, the most powerfully talented musical couple playing today, used their pandemic downtime to create a sprawling four-part concept album, I Am The Moon.  Produced by Trucks and carefully recorded by Bobby Tis, the two-hour, 24-song undertaking (each chapter will be individually released throughout summer 2022) has complex origins.  At the suggestion of vocalist Mike Mattison of the now 12-piece Tedeschi Trucks "collective," the chief source material is the 12th century Persian poem, "Layla & Majnun" by Nizami Ganjavi—also the inspiration for Derek and the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. (Coincidentally, Trucks is even named after the  band.) In talking about the project, Trucks has referenced concept-driven albums of the past like Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love, an influence that is especially apparent in "Pasaquan" the final track of this opening chapter Crescent.  Opener "Hear My Dear" is a Tedeschi showcase, proving again she's carried the mantle of female blues/rock singer and guitar player to a higher place.  The collective's three-piece horn section enters on the celebratory barrelhouse blues-meets-Frenchman Street swagger of "Fall In," with its rambunctious, wonderful made-up-word and proper-noun-as-verb lyrics: "The wigglation in his walk/ The Cincinnati in your sway/ And we ramble 'til the break of dawn." Tedeschi cuts loose and works the upper range of her voice on "Circles 'Round the Sun,'' where the group's trio of harmony vocalists chant while Trucks sprays a solo across the tune's funky background. A call-and-response duet with several soloing horns then ensues before a spoken word conclusion. The entire group, but especially Trucks, Tedeschi and the drummers, Tyler Greenwell and Isaac Eady, find room to stretch out on the improvised, Allman Brothers-like closing jam, "Pasaquan." An exceptionally strong start to an ambitious, career-defining endeavor.  Robert Baird/Qobuz