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From The Desk Of Tom Moon: ReviewYou.com

You might know award-winning critic/journalist Tom Moon from his bestselling book 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die, his contributions to NPR’s All Things Considered or his freelance work in the likes of Rolling Stone, GQ, Blender, Spin and Vibe, but around the MAGNET office, when we think of Moon, we think of the nearly two decades he spent as the music critic of our hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. When you regularly read a writer’s work for that long, you feel like you really get a sense of who someone is, so we were shocked to find out that Moon is also a musician who just made an album. Into The Ojalá (Frosty Cordial) is credited to Moon Hotel Lounge Project and came out earlier this month. MHLP is an impressive, instrumental, jazz/lounge/Latin-leaning project featuring Moon and six local musicians playing nine Moon-penned tunes as well as a cover of gospel standard “Rock Of Ages.” We are excited to have Moon guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.

Moon: Here we have a new wrinkle on the economy that surrounds independent artists. Or, perhaps more accurately, preys on said artists’ appetite for fame and all the trimmings. Through the magic of e-commerce, it’s now possible for an act with a new release to pay a modest fee ($39) and get reviewed by an actual professional music writer. Pay $340 for the “Instant Press Kit” package, and you’ll get 10 reviews from 10 different well-qualified music obsessives.

Not to get all church/state here, but isn’t an integral part of the game of Success In The Web 2.0 Music Business about attracting press in grassroots, organic, up-from-nowhere fashion? Isn’t it about being so damned irresistible that the sweatpants-wearing Pitchfork scribe is compelled to swoon at ridiculous length about every last tortured lyric on your opus? It’s easy to understand the market for this service (which, in what oldschoolers may find a delicious twist, is provided by a beloved PR firm, Ariel Publicity). It can be a neat shortcut for Sadsack Songwriter who’s confronting the catch-22 of the entry-level biz: You can’t generate press if you don’t play a gig, and often you can’t get a gig if you don’t have some track record in the press. These days it can be tought to get a measly review in the online edition of the local Bugle, much less Rolling Stone. Problem solved! Pad that presskit, baby!

But then I’m a cynical fuck. Lately I’ve been thinking I should be more sympathetic to the plight of the indie act, especially since I am now spending part of my time being an underemployed musician again. So, in an effort to fully embrace the indie-artist experience, I sent off my $39 to ReviewYou.com and am anxiously waiting to read what a professional music writer has to say about Moon Hotel Lounge Project’s debut, Into The Ojalá. Stay tuned: I promise to post an update with this review, which will pretty much be the entire press kit, whenever I get it. That writer better make his deadline.

Update, 2/26/11: Read the ReviewYou.com review of Into The Ojalá after the jump.

Artist: Moon Hotel Lounge Project
Album: Into The Ojalá
Review by Alex Henderson

Music journalists who are both insightful jazz critics and insightful rock critics are not impossible to find, but they are definitely a minority. Most jazz critics have no interest in covering rock, and most rock critics have no interest in covering jazz. But there have been exceptions to that rule; the late Ralph J. Gleason immediately comes to mind (Gleason never had a problem covering Jimi Hendrix one minute and Dave Brubeck the next). During Tom Moon’s many years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, it was obvious that he was as knowledgeable of jazz as he was of rock. Moon (who has also written for Rolling Stone, Spin, GQ and many more) is one of the few journalists who can write about U2, R.E.M. or Bruce Springsteen as insightfully as he writes about John Coltrane, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy or Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers. Without a doubt, Moon is part of a rare breed, and his ability to appreciate jazz as well as rock and funk serves him well on Into the Ojalá, the first album by his Moon Hotel Lounge Project.

This 2010 recording finds Moon stepping out of journalist mode and into musician mode, which makes sense when one considers that he was once a saxophonist in Maynard Ferguson’s big band. There is an old cliché about music critics being frustrated musicians and film critics being frustrated actors, but Moon doesn’t sound frustrated on Into the Ojalá. Actually, he sounds like he is really enjoying himself on this instrumental jazz CD, which draws on post-bop and fusion as well as Brazilian jazz. Moon, who is heard on tenor sax, favors a blend of acoustic and electric instruments. The other members of the Moon Hotel Lounge Project are Kevin Hanson (the album’s producer) on acoustic and electric guitar, Mike Frank on acoustic piano and electric keyboards, Jim Stager on acoustic and electric bass, Behn Gillece on vibes, Erik Johnson on drums, and Josh Robinson on percussion. Into the Ojalá has too many electric instruments and too much rock influence to appeal to jazz purists or bop snobs, but for non-purist jazz listeners, this is a consistently engaging listen.

One of the positive things about Into the Ojalá is the fact that it has a sense of intrigue yet is also melodic, lyrical and easy to absorb. Moon goes for accessibility, but there is also plenty of room for the musicians to let loose and improvise. Into the Ojalá achieves a funkiness that recalls the better instincts of producer Creed Taylor’s CTI Records. Back in the 1970s, CTI boasted a roster that included the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Stanley Turrentine, George Benson and Joe Farrell, among others. At times, CTI could be too slick, too commercial and too calculated for its own good, but when the company didn’t overproduce and found the right balance of jazz spontaneity and musical hooks, good things happened. That type of balance is at work here. One finds infectiousness and warm lyricism as well as a commitment to improvisation on “Powerful Tonic,” “Ronnie Waltz,” “Scaffolding, How to Dismantle” and “Seed the Future” as well as on “Rumi, We’re Losing,” “Thank the Eyes” and album opener “What You Had When You Knew You Believed.” As much improvisation as one finds on this 50-minute CD, the performances also sound like they were meant to happen. In other words, Moon and his colleagues aren’t just haphazardly throwing things against the wall and seeing if they stick.

Although most of the songs are Moon compositions, his group also offers an unlikely arrangement of “Rock of Ages.” This “Rock of Ages” isn’t Def Leppard’s hard rock hit from 1983 but rather, Augustus Toplady’s 18th Century Christian hymn (which has long since entered the public domain), and it lends itself surprisingly well to a pensive jazz-rock makeover.

Many music journalists will never record albums even if they have musical training; they’ve grown accustomed to being the critic rather than the one being critiqued, and they know how rough the music industry can be. Thankfully Moon, opted to display his musical chops as well as his journalistic chops, and Into the Ojalá demonstrates that he made a wise decision.

Review by Alex Henderson
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)