Traveler 2026
Acquiring the taste of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Arizonan collective unveil previously unheard tunes to stun European listeners.
Live: Festival CresCendo
That this ensemble haven’t issued a single concert album despite gracing stages all over the world for more than a quarter of a century may amount to a universal aberration – but then, each of Scott Jeffers’s records crackles with such energy that the American musician didn’t reckon it necessary to release live reports. What was different about the group’s 2025 appearance in Saint-Palais-sur-Mer is difficult to pinpoint, yet there’s something special – magical even – in the report of their French adventures, up to the listing of a belly dancer in the platter’s credits. While her moves are absent from the sonic document of the quartet’s Old-World outing, their contagious passages feel just as exciting, especially when the foursome tread less familiar waters, with a few fan favorites from the past thrown in for good measure and turned into riveting wigouts. There could be more, of course, if not for the festival format which prevented the overseas guests from going further out on a limb.
Still, the collective drill into their repertoire with total abandon, “Deeper” from "Kings Of India" first creepily crawling and then speeding up and taking on mini-epic proportions, and the triumphant “Awaken The Light” from "Mongol" reaching, well, deeper into the well of the band’s past. There’s certain logic in it and in the pair of "Out Of The Dust" pieces – “Pipes Of Pitlochry” where Mongolian throat singing and Celtic motifs gel to a great effect, and “Elephant Drum” where symphonic winds blow – arriving together to help the punters focus on hypnotic aspects of the ensemble’s instrumental extravaganzas and Scott’s inspired vocals. Yet all of these are bookended with numbers that haven’t landed on any of the group’s studio offerings, thus rendering the performance’s start and end arrestingly mysterious.
As the deliciously raw “Into The Blue” flows in, fueled by Jason Wiedman’s spicy beats and driven by Zack Egan’s six-string riffs, to pull the audience in and let go only more than fifty minutes later, and “A Minor Caprice” finds Jeffers whip up a violin and unleash his inner Dvořák to add classical elements to the folksy brew, exotic exquisiteness and rock roughness blend to create an uplifting atmosphere. But then there’s “Wicked Train” which taps into an Appalachian tradition the Phoenicians rarely dare to demonstrate and present here with enviable gusto, the main man’s banjo spanked with Barton Applewhite’s fretless bass, before “The Haggis” hardens its humorous jig into a metal-heavy attack on the senses to serve up a fitting finale for an invigorating gig. A treat and a trip rolled in one, this recording is an overdue delivery of multiple delights.
****1/3
