With the exceptions of the first stirrings of the new upcoming Mike Stern album Echoes and Other Songs unveiled recently and Scott Kinsey's tremendous Luniwaz Live there is very little really gutsy 1970s and 80s style US jazz-rock fusion around at the moment. Can I Tell You Something? finds its own astroturf and lands at the funkier end of the spectrum. But that is why it's refreshing listening to Mark Lettieri wig out on 'Dragonfly' which opens the album. Always teetering on the brink of shredding some monstrously convoluted relatively amped up (for jazz) guitar line or other it's an album full of derring do and hair raising diversions. But a woozily gentle slightly cheesy cover of Cyndi Lauper/Rob Hyman's 'Time After Time' covered famously by Miles isn't the best thing here at all even if it is easily the ethereal outlier distinct from the relative mayhem of a Kim Jong Un nuclear weapons race stand off on display elsewhere. But it's fusion not fission. And nobody plays Dr Evil.
The good guys win the day. There's fabulous keys from Daniel Porter on 'Shimmy Tiger' and the Billy Cobham-esque drumming of Jason ''J'' Thomas works so well. Also here is badass bass guitar from Wes Stephenson. By cultivating a teasing jam-like heat on a track like 'Greenspace' it's not too samey either. The funky Bobby Sparks on organ (and a bit of MiniMoog) crops up in a few places. It would have been great to have heard more of him.
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