[rating=8.00]
Although pianist Brad Mehldau spends the greater portion of his time on his main pursuits, that is, playing with his trio and in a solo format, his outside collaborations aren’t much less intense. Or provocative for that matter: witness Nearness, a live duet album with saxophonist Joshua Redman or Taming the Tiger, a pairing (dubbed Mehliana) with the pianist on an electric instrument playing Fender Rhodes and synthesizers exchanging ideas with Mark Guiliana on drums and effects.
After sold-out duo concerts in New York during December of 2015, Mehldau and mandolinist Chris Thile, host of A Prairie Home Companion and leader of progressive bluegrass group Punch Brothers, sequestered themselves at Avatar Studios where they spent three days recording together. Unorthodox in both conception and execution, the duo employed just piano and mandolin in service of original compositions and an eclectic selection of cover songs, an approach that yielded a double album where spontaneity, craft and technical skill morph into a combustible mix.
Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau is a heady listen if for no other reason than its approximate seventy-minute length. But, over the course of two CD’s or two LP’s, tracks including “Independence Day” are so engrossing, it’s worth pondering what effect the album would have if it were purely instrumental. But Thile is an experienced singer, and a fairly distinctive one, and he surpasses himself in the torch-song rendition of “I Cover the Waterfront,” while his voice becomes an instrument unto itself on “Noise Machine.”
The exquisite nature of the recording is all-encompassing on its own terms too because, within the depth of this audio mix, Mehldau and Thile conjure a dream-like quality with their playing and singing. There’s virtually as much detail in the latter’s navigation of his acoustic stringed instrument as in the former’s traversing of the ivories on “Daughter of Eve,” and the intricacy of their interaction becomes increasingly dense as the duo works up a definite head of steam by the time the cut is over.
In addition to self-penned material like the opening collaboration, “The Old Shade Tree,” the eleven tracks here (a bonus performance of Fiona Apple’s “Fast As You Can” appears on the vinyl edition) include “Elliott Smith’s “Independence Day,” Joni Mitchell’s “Marcie” and a rousing take on Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Further evidence of the varied tastes both artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers, it’s worth noting Mehldau and Thile approach all those tunes with the same unassuming air they adopt in their ‘pose’ for the album’s cover photo. The direct corollary of that casual air is the delicacy they apply to the closing “ Tabhair dom do Lámh; ” the title of this seventeenth century song fittingly translates to “ Give Me Your Hand, ” so this concluding track thus becomes an implied recognition of the mutually complementary talent(s) brought to fruition on Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile.
