Jazz is a shared reference, a musical education held in common for the members of Songs of Tales. However, calling them a jazz group is misleading and limiting. Their new album opens with the reverberating electric guitar of “Traure,” which paints a bleak, prickly sonic landscape descended from Ennio Morricone. New Orleans parade rhythms set the tempo for the lively “Burning Bright’s” avant-cacophony. “Awake” is dreamy, “Cinema” suggests an instrumental Tom Waits might have written (but didn’t). The Canadian quartet seamlessly brings together influences that span the world in a context anchored by a rock-solid rhythm section. The shared reference of Charles Mingus is heard on their lone non-original, “Moanin’.”
