Review: Peter Kenneally reviews In Cahoots by Inside Out

In Cahoots by Inside Out
Released by Jazzhead
Review / Sestina by Peter Kenneally



The easiest and most comprehensive way to put a firm foot
wrong in a review is to blithely say that the record sounds
like so-and-so or that that the way the musicians play
reminds you of such-and-such: there’s a whole world
of difference, especially between things that sound the same,
and in fact were you actually really listening

anyway?  So forget the comparisons: on first listening
to ‘In Cahoots’, on which by the way hardly anyone puts a foot
wrong from beginning to end, back it came: the same
thought so often thought lately: what is it that jazz sounds
like in Australia? All the musings and jazzes of the world
seem to seek asylum here, and after processing, we play

with them. Inside Out play with quite a few of them, as if they are at play
in a magisterial field the lord has abandoned to them; but listening
say, to ‘Shop and Gargle’ step from the world
of Thomas Tallis and his quiet devotions to place its other foot
firmly in the rude, profane realm of life where everything sounds
like sex, and sex and prayer are essentially the same,

there was a glimmer of something laconic, with the same
refracted light Australian jazz often gives off: the band play
music that echoes and ‘reproduces’ the usual suspect sounds
as if, the old cliché might say, there’s nobody else listening.
The origins of jazz are like a lucky rabbit’s foot
tucked in a pocket, and down here at the so-called end of the world

these musicians make their own origins, precise, distinctive, a world
away from emulation, the rhythms and relationship keeping the same
sinewy  balance  whatever the difference in the metre: each foot
falling skipping striding stomping, as Williamson and Hannaford play
in turnabout,  rich equality. Cool and visceral, the effect is like listening
to (insert Australian cliché) except that of course it sounds

much more grown up than that. Even though there are familiar sounds
rattling monkishly behind ‘The Stoop’, and the odd flourish from the world
of prog-rock frippery (it gets in everywhere!), with each listening
something particular holds your ear, and it’s never the same
thing twice: however many times you play
this record, there’s always a new game afoot.


Whichever foot falls first it always sounds
when they play as if the whole world
is catching the same breath, and listening.


Inside Out is

Paul Williamson (trumpet/composer)
Marc Hannaford (piano)
Sam Zerna (double bass)
James McLean (drums)

A sestina (says Wikipedia) is “…a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet …[envoi]… for a total of thirty-nine lines”