Super review by Cal Gibson, of The Secret Soul Society.

Here it comes again, the sound of jazz turning in on itself, smoothing out the creases of the musical imagination and looking sharp, the old shapes moulded anew each time – those twelve trusty notes reborn, rebirthed, rebagged: this is Josh Johnson throwing it out there, inviting you in, while kindly requesting you take off your shoes at the door, if you don’t mind.

Johnson’s credited for all the creative commotion heard within his new long-player, Unusual Object. His saxophone twisted and turned into a dream of a life well lived. Harmony as healing, sound as vision: jazz can be whatever you wish, right? It can sidle up to you late in the night with a whispered promise of a better land, singing and dancing and acting the (wise) fool, the fine art of distraction.

A well-established cog in the LA underground, Johnson’s played with Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, and Broken Bells, amongst many others – here he’s venturing out alone. The lonely kick drum of Marvis accompanied by stately patterns, twists and turns, ups and downs and all-arounds. Simple, spare and brimful of soul – repetition leading to reprieve – minimal yet moving, adventurous, echoes of the past repackaged for a dense, tense future.

Quince sits contentedly, a still life of a dream rendered in vivid hues – a squat, hot six minutes of sonic design parked in your driveway refusing to leave. Electronics stealing in with dark pads and skittery percussion under the whoomph of the sax – post-rockers Tortoise shaking hands on a deal with the ghost of Sonny Rollins perhaps, or a funeral lament for an idea gone badly awry. It’s small and yet somehow huge: music that says well here we all are, what are we going to say, and how are we going to say it?

Sterling flies by in a kick and a rush: nervous, jangly, a super-highway of tortured feelings and fretful ambivalence. It’s a whole different thing, naked and unashamed, lop-sided and leaning in to the avant-garde. Try falling asleep to this one (no, don’t….). Johnson’s playing with you, dear listener, just checking you have what it takes / fakes.

All Alone, of course, is the end-piece: a quiet exhuming of all that has gone before. A tear-stained missive from the musician’s melted mind. The synth arpeggio and warm pads sprinkled with the sound of the sax slowly sighing, slowly dying, slowly crying. It is a beautiful coda to an album full of sharpened joy and free of dulled mimicry. An Unusual Object, for sure. A triumph of musical wilfulness and hang-it-all creativity gone AWOL. Where’s he likely to go next, we wonder…?

Josh Johnson’s Unusual Object is out now on Northern Spy.