Brad Mehldau

A while ago, I struggled with, but eventually embraced, Brad Mehldau's new trio set. It made me want to check out his Live in Tokyo, which got rave reviews when it first came out almost four years ago. I recently did, and the verdict is that you can have my copy. No, it's not that bad. In fact, it's quite good in spots. As a whole, however, it's disappointing, and the reason for the disappointment can be summed up in one word: bombast. Mehldau plays unaccompanied, and really stretches out here, but one can stretch out in many directions, and Mehldau has chosen one I rarely, if ever, want to go in. I know he is perfectly capable of understatement, a masterful use of space, and a good balance between intensity and subtlety. One needs to go no further than his other unaccompanied disc, Elegiac Cycle, for proof. Tokyo, however, leans heavily in the direction of loudness, density and busyness.

Things start out well enough with a cover of Nick Drake's "Things Behind the Sun." I am not familiar with the original, but Mehldau's version makes clear that there is a finely crafted pop song in there – something he is quite good at. He embellishes just enough to make things interesting and stops before he runs away from himself. The Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me" continues more or less in the same vein. It's more vampy, but the lovely theme of the original remains lovely, and the droning chords in the left hand support the solo without getting in the way too much. But I probably wouldn't want to listen much past this point on a regular basis. "From This Moment On," another standard, also preserves its theme, but the middle section is far too hectic for my taste. Assuming the CD was sequenced in the same order as the concert it documents, Mehldau has clearly warmed up, and the portents are not good. "Monk's Dream" completely steamrolled me. Mehldau was pounding on the keyboard so hard that I had to turn down the volume. It does have one saving grace – a wry quote from "Linus and Lucy" – but a three-second joke does not save an eight-minute train wreck.

What follows is supposed to be the pièce de resistance of the record – a twenty-minute version of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," which he has recorded before, but never, as far as I know, unaccompanied. Think what you will of a jazz pianist covering Radiohead – I happen to think that Mehldau, who is reportedly a big fan of the band, usually makes his renditions work. But twenty minutes?! Give me a break. Even Keith Jarrett, who built a career on that sort of self-indulgence, rarely gets away with it as far as I am concerned, but when he does, it's only because he is able to put listeners into a sort of trance where they listen sub-rationally, to coin a term. Jarrett can shut your left brain off completely. Mehldau can't, and ends up coming off as a pianistic loudmouth. I firmly believe in the economy of means, in music as in conversation. Mehldau's "Android" is the musical equivalent of the annoying guy or gal at a party that monopolizes the conversation but does not say much of substance.

There are two more tracks on the disc – the Gershwins' "How Long Has This Been Going On," and "River Man," another Drake cover. Both are fine, but I was tired by this point. Mehldau's incessant pounding on the keyboard has worn me out.

Would my experience have been different if I heard the show live? Probably. Would I have “got” it on a deeper level? I don't know. It's possible. But I wasn't in Tokyo that night, and whatever I would have got there I did not get from the recording.

A curious thing, extra-musical but significant, is the audience reaction (Nonesuch left the applause in). Japanese audiences are infamously conservative. The applause is always so polite and so uniform that you would think these people were attending a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, not a jazz concert. When there is a discernible variation in the reaction, it is always proportional to the “weirdness” of a number. To use the aforementioned Jarrett as an example, his recent Radiance was also recorded in Tokyo. The slower, more lyrical pieces elicit something approaching enthusiasm, whereas the applause after the more dissonant, wild improvisations is strictly pro-forma. Not so with Mehldau. It is the crazy, bombastic stuff that elicits the most heartfelt response from the audience, and by Japanese standards, it is wild, complete with (occasional) whistling, hooting and feet stomping. Maybe things really are changing in Japan, and Mehldau (born 1970) is attracting fans of his own generation, while Jarrett (born 1945) – of his.