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Customer Reviews of Expression

Coltrane's final expressive masterpiece.
Well, no one can accuse Coltrane of not having an imagination. Improvised music is a tricky art. Lack of an immediately identifiable melody can sometimes make improvisation a daunting and annoying venture. Coltrane was a master of this art however and even though his solos were sometimes long winded, each one of them had at least a few areas of pure, unadultered brilliance. "Expression" is not an easy Coltrane album. There is no such thing as an easy Coltrane album but this one poses a real challenge. This album, for being his last is not as atonal as one might think, but if you haven't heard any Coltrane beyond "A Love Supreme", this album is going to blow you away. He is pretty much playing in a quartet setting here, with Pharaoh Sanders only playing on one track. Most reviews of "Expression" say that it gives no clue to where Coltrane was headed, I think it is a fine last album. It doesn't really show where he was headed because if you listen very carefully, this album has a sense of finality to it. Each track seems laden with wispy overtones of desperation, hopeless and acceptance of fate. Coltrane must have known the end was near when he recorded this. The quartet on this album is not the classic quartet. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones are gone, Jimmy Garrison is the only existing member from the classic quartet. Rashied Ali is on drums and Alice Coltrane on Piano. It is a very different sound from the sound of the Classic Quartet. More spacious. As far as rhythms go, gone is the polyrhythmic thunder of Elvin Jones, Ali plays in more of a panrhythmic fashion, almost making his drumset sound melodic, as opposed to a timekeeper. He is adding to the sound. Alice Coltrane's piano is lush, rolling and spacious. Gone are the wonderful chords of McCoy Tyner, Alice's style is very different, but very effective for what Coltrane wanted to play at that point (listen to the beginning of "Expression" for a good hint of what I mean.) The same goes for Ali. This is truly a wonderful final statement from Coltrane. He even plays flute on a song. All in all a very magnificent 51 minutes, and a little sad too, not only because it was his last album, but because the music is somewhat sad.

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Impressionistic Free Jazz
Coltrane very well might have named this album "Impressions" rather than "Expression," but he had of course already used that title for one of his earlier modal compositions. The reason Impressions would have been a better title is because, though the music in this album is "Free Form" or "Free Jazz" or "New Thing" (or whatever you want to call it), it really is quite accessible for this style of music, and since many people are probably going to realize that this is "Late Coltrane" and see the title "Expression" -- what with its connotations of stodgy, almost Teutonic, hyper-emotionalism -- and basically run for cover back to their copies of BLUE TRANE and GIANT STEPS. Which would be a shame, because EXPRESSION is, this side of early Ornette Coleman, about as accessible as this style of jazz can be.

Though, like Coltrane's other forays into Free Jazz, there is, at times, tremendous ferocity and spiritual anguish in his playing, EXPRESSION, for the most part, features slow tempos and shimmering impressionistic textures -- courtesy of pianist Alice Coltrane, percussionist Rashied Ali, and the ever-loyal Jimmy Garrison on bass -- over which Coltrane, through his tremendously warm and full-bodied "late tone," delivers passages of almost unbearably gorgeous lyricism. Yes, Virginia, it really is that moving.

EXPRESSION, along with STELLAR REGIONS and INTERSTELLAR SPACE, are the products of Coltrane's last miraculous month in the recording studio (February, 1967), before succumbing to liver cancer later that summer. Though even diehard Coltrane fans are frequently apt to give short-shrift to this music in comparison to his earlier output, each one of these albums is a masterpiece, and are therefore all essential purchases. For just about any other musician they would constitute the peak attaintments of his career. For Coltrane, such is the embarrassment of riches of his recorded musical legacy, many people seem to feel they have the luxury to overlook and disregard these late masterpieces. Big mistake.

Another reason these albums tend to be overlooked is owing to what might be called the "Linda McCartney Syndrome." That is, where a talentless spouse is, under a policy of matrimonial nepotism, introduced into the band, and granted equal billing. Fortunately, that doesn't apply here. Though McCoy Tyner was perhaps the ideal pianist for Coltrane's earlier modal work, he was simply unsuited for holding the pianist's chair in Coltrane's quartet after 1965 -- the year that Coltrane decamped to the avant-garde wing of jazz (Tyner's rather out-of-place quasi-traditionalist comping on ASCENSION tends to prove this). Compared to Tyner, Alice Coltrane has a less active left hand, and an overall lighter touch, which really helps to put this sort of music over. In short, she was temperamentally better-suited to late-period Coltrane than Tyner, and Coltrane fans should try to get over this Linda McCartneyization of her legacy. She's really an excellent musician, perfect for this style of music (albeit she doesn't appear on INTERSTELLAR SPACE, which is a duet with Ali).

Far be it for me to suggest that EXPRESSION is "Free Jazz for people who don't like Free Jazz." It's not. It is uncompromising, brutally direct, brutally intense and brashly exploratory jazz, deliberately and relentlessly purged of be-bop and traditionalist jazz mannerisms. However, if you're not familiar with late Coltrane but are curious, this very might be a better place to start than ASCENSION, because the textures are lighter and less cluttered, and the pieces are much shorter in length, therefore making the music a lot easier to digest for first-time listeners.

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You're missing something if you haven't heard this yet.
I'm not a fan of any one particular genre of music (i.e., jazz). But I do appreciate meaningful music. This music has meaning that words cannot describe and expresses it well. According to the liner notes, Coltrane came up with the name of the album three days before he died of what appears to have been a lifelong desire to convey the depths of his soul. Experience it.