Dwain

• The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse!, 2024) is a fiery yet spacious meeting of minds that feels less like a “guest feature” and more like the formation of a true quartet. The Messthetics—Brendan Canty (drums), Joe Lally (bass), and Anthony Pirog (guitar)—already had a language rooted in post-punk energy, jazz flexibility, and rock’s riff-driven force. By adding James Brandon Lewis on tenor saxophone, the music expands into something that can pivot effortlessly between punk-jazz propulsion, modal exploration, and spiritual-jazz expansiveness.

• The album’s balance is striking: it never feels like a compromise between “rock band” and “jazz soloist,” but instead like a living organism where each player adapts to the others. You hear post-hardcore groove meeting free-jazz openness, yet with a melodic core that makes the album accessible without softening its edge.

• The opening track, “L’Orso,” sets the tone with a taut riff and muscular backbeat, pitting Lewis’s broad tenor phrases against Pirog’s angular guitar stabs. “Emergence” rides a hypnotic bass ostinato that blossoms into wide-open improvisation, showcasing the quartet’s ability to stretch a simple cell into a full-blown journey. On “Boatly,” the band drifts from hushed ballad textures into an ecstatic sprint, while “Asthenia” closes in meditative fashion—slow-burning, spacious, and steeped in spiritual intensity.

• Lewis’s tenor provides the emotional center—broad, declamatory, and deeply human—while Pirog’s guitar oscillates between cinematic washes and jagged bursts. Canty and Lally keep the music rooted but never static, shaping the drama through dynamic shifts and subtle metric play. The result is music that’s immediate and visceral, yet endlessly rewarding on repeat listens: equal parts groove, atmosphere, and spiritual fire. It places the band in a lineage that runs from Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time to Sonny Sharrock and post-rock, while sounding unmistakably of the present moment.

Overall score: 7.4/10

Max

• The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis is the epitome of musical mixology. It melds together jazz improvisation and ‘punk-infused’ rock in order to create flowing melodies, catchy hooks and interesting solo moments. As one listens to the record, pay attention to how many sides of the ‘punk jazz jam’ rubix cube they’re reflecting.

• The Messthetics is a trio made up of two members of the underground punk band Fugazi (bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Cantly) plus the guitarist Anthony Pirog. This release adds the newer saxophonic sensation James Brandon Lewis to the mix, making for a vast, full sound. The collaborative element to this album is very much appreciated and executed well. Songs like “Emergence,” “Fourth Wall,” and “L’Orso” give off the most expected sounds, with wailing sax and guitar and driving bass and drums as one would predict with this musical approach. Yet, other tunes like “Boatly” and “Three Sisters” are more in the modern jazz vein, given their uses of different time meters, lyrical melodies and general easiness to their essence. A couple of the tracks, specifically “That Thang” and “Emergence” are just a tad too short, in my humble opinion. It’s great to have a variety of song lengths, but I wish the solos on “That Thang” were just a bit stretched out. Speaking of “That Thang,” it is clear that there are morsels of blues in that one, along with “Railroad Tracks Home.” I love the groove of that one too. “Boatly” gives off the image of moving through the water and arriving at a very different destination from whence it came, as evident by the playing at the end of that track-oh, what a journey! “Asthenia” gets a little lost in the sauce (despite its neat ending rubato section), while “The Time Is The Place” has a catchy bassline not to be ignored.

• One major disappointment to this release was the lack of liner notes that come along with the physical copy. One must opine on how this collaboration took place by scouring the interwebs (as one must do nowadays for most things anyway). It’s also interesting to listen to Lewis’ approach to this record. It’s not abundantly clear how or in what ways the sax should fit in with these musical elements, but James Brandon Lewis does a fine job. There are certainly some solos I prefer over others, and his time-feel is very interesting to me. I wish he was more ‘in the groove’ or ‘in the pocket’ on “Railroad Tracks Home,” but his playing on the closing song, “Fourth Wall” (in addition to others, of course) is dynamite. In general, bass lines are supremely on point, and the drums accentuate many ‘hot’ moments here, even though the constant 8th-note cymbal playing on the last 2 tunes becomes monotonous and annoying. Despite such tiny issues, the record certainly deserves your attention. Kudos to the group on their creation and hope their collaboration continues.

Overall score: 7.1/10