Onion Boy 2025
Esteemed bassist revisits his sophomore effort to find new meanings in nearly forgotten past.
Calm Before The Storm
Given his proclivity for collaborations with top talent, there’s no wonder in the scarcity of Bryan Beller’s solo output which amounts to three studio and one live album. It was the American artist’s second opus, though, that he always perceived as a turning point, the appearance of “Thanks in Advance” preceding a remarkable increase in Beller’s involvement in various projects. Bryan also became a part of THE ARISTOCRATS whose repertoire would feature two pieces from the aforementioned offering – hence his choice of “Calm Before The Storm” as a title of the EP with those cuts, augmented with another mini-epic, all freshly remixed by Forrester Savell. While their original variants never sounded stale, sonic updates serve these three tracks well, the composer’s brilliance shining through star-studded performances brighter than ever, and his guests elevating the exquisite intricacy of tunes and arrangements without damaging the ferocious sentiments concealed at the core of each melody.
Of course, the belligerent, infectiously aggressive “Cave Dweller” could be shorter, but this troglodyte blues brings out Beller’s emotionality in the best way possible, his interplay with Toss Panos’s drums and Griff Peters’s guitars blustery, if finely detailed, and his low-strung riffs resonating on both visceral and cerebral levels. However, the jazzy “Greasy Wheel” rolls much looser, oiled by Jeff Babko’s Hammond’s passages that let Bryan lock into Joe Travers’s percussive jive, puncture Rick Musallam’s six-string sway in all the right places, and chant “Hoo-Ha!” for further catchiness. Yet whereas the main man’s instrumental armory is initially limited, “Love Terror Adrenaline / Break Through” finds him handle a wider array of aural weapons, acoustic ivories and synth pads expanding the fusion number’s Ellington-esque perspective to which Mike Keneally’s axes and electric keyboards give a serrated, albeit cinematic, edge.
Together, these pieces form a powerful hattrick that taps into the very essence of Bryan Beller’s art, and there’s no better introduction to the master’s modus operandi.
****3/4
