It says something about Jeff Parker’s estimation of the value of the ETA IVtet that Happy Today was made at all. The guy’s so busy these days that he’s declined to tour with Tortoise, and yet he finds the time to record a third album with a combo that only plays live shows and whose longest-running gig was Monday nights at a now-defunct oyster bar?
But if you look and listen, it all becomes clear. There’s a web of connection between these four players that feeds a musical tap that seems inexhaustible. The quartet’s membership includes Jay Bellerose, an in-demand studio musician who is, among others, Robert Plant’s first-call drummer. Since Bellerose and Parker live in Los Angeles, that’s not so remarkable in and of itself, but Bellerose is also interested in improvising and has a great feel for open-ended grooves. Bassist Anna Butterss and alto-sax/electronics player Josh Johnson are a matched set who are members of electric improv-groove band SML. Johnson also plays with Parker in his more production-oriented New Breed band; he gets all the things that Parker wants when he’s not freely improvising.
It’s actually a bit off the mark to call the ETA IVtet a freely improvising group, for while it’s true that its members play without pre-arranged tunes of any sort, they have a history and a method. Bellerose might fall silent, but the group never drops the pulse as he, Johnson and Butters engage in conversational exchanges with each other and Parker. The quartet instinctively returns to this area again and again, not to reproduce it, but to see how much deeper the musicians can get. Repetition and patience play equally important parts in the music they imagine, which frees Parker to get just as deep into the groove. Textures stack and loop, tones elongate and swell, so that the results float as much as they groove in an ongoing exploration of give and take. [International Anthem/Nonesuch]
—Bill Meyer
