Hedvig Mollestad Trio - "Shoot" Review

Artist/ Band: Hedvig Mollestad Trio
Title: Shoot
Label: Rune Grammofon
Year of Release: 2011
Offical Artist/ Band Link

The Review:

This 3 piece Norwegian band is made up of Hedvig Mollestad - Guitars, Ellen Brekken - Double Bass and Ivar lo Bjornstad on Drums. Although it’s a nice mix of heavy jazz rock and rhythm and blues, the emphasis is on the r & b. Lots of syncopation and flow, not unlike some of Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, Jimi Hendrix, Allan Holdworth and Leslie West’s music. I expected some avant touches being on the Rune Grammofon label but only a slight bit of that anywhere to be found. This truly sounds like a 70's guitar god’s solo with some jazz tunes thrown in here and there.

Combine heavy distorted guitar, light muffled drums (another 70's trait) with supportive bass, and a grunge sometimes overdrive lead guitar, and you got a solid idea of how this sounds. I like the occasional breaks into the more clarified and melodic jazz pockets. It’s almost all well executed and well put together. While less interesting than I was hoping for, it still stands up nicely as an old school r & b with jazz structure. No doubt fans of 70's jam bands will love much of this. Track 7 (‘No Encore’) is a standout for me with it’s cool drum intro and a nod to the avant garde, which then moves to a fluid jazz fusion in the general vicinity of Terje Rypdal, Eivind Aarset, and Jimi Hendrix in his jazz exploring mode.

This is all instrumental except for one staggeringly awful vocal track called ‘Blood Witch’, which is the only cover tune on the album, and by The Melvins (so that tells you something). Now for this listener who was already having to straddle the line of a heavy rock and blues type recording with some good jazz, it really did almost make me hate this CD. I understand the taste and decisions of artists to play what they want, but I’m just stating my opinion on the fact that it pretty much ruined the whole release for me to have this chunky rock and roll grunge piece that was truly out of place in the line up of Hedvig’s tunes. On the other hand, the last track is beautiful with a mellow blues bringing things to a rest. Yes, the contrasts are here, and it’s a hit and miss for me. I will program my CD player to skip track 8 if I listen to this again, sad to say. I do think Mollestad is a fine musician, and I would look forward to the next project she does.

Reviewed by Lee Henderson on November 8th, 2012

Tracks:

01. Gun And The E-Kid (2:42)

02. Ashes (4:29)

03. For The Air (5:44)

04. Doom's Lair (5:59)

05. The Dead One (4:33)

06. Sidetracked (4:30)

07. No Encore (5:49)

08. Blood Witch (2:55)

09. The Valley (2:26)