The premier plectrist Gordon Grdina never backs away from a challenge and it’s clear from his discography that he actively seeks them. He embraced a special kind of challenge in interpreting the singular music of Tim Berne without backing from anyone else, a challenge conquered within the contents of his newest release, Oddly Enough.
Oddly Enough comes pretty close on the heels of another album where another guitarist took on Berne songs alone. Gregg Belisle-Chi’s revelatory 2021 album Koi: Performing the Music of Tim Berne had opened up a vista for appreciating the vanguard saxophonist’s peerless scores, an idea that – now that it’s out there – should have been done a long time ago.
So Grdina is the second guitarist to devote an album tackling Berne songs as far as I know, but as I’ll explain shortly, Oddly Enough is far from a Koi, V. 2 because Grdina is a vastly different guitar player. Besides, he didn’t even set out to make such a record: Berne offhandedly sent him a new composition and Grdina later sent back a recording of that song. That instigated more such back-and-forth until Grdina had a full set of Berne tunes in the can.
I’m guessing that Grdina wasn’t aware of the other Berne covers project percolating recently when he recorded his and in any case, his approach to it differs: in addition to acoustic/classical guitars, Grdina plays electric and midi-modified electric guitar, a dobro and, of course, an oud. With few exceptions, he is multi-tracking several of these instruments at once. Grdina is just as invested in how the final product sounds as much as he cares about the acumen that went into playing these complex songs.
Oddly Enough begins, oddly enough, with not the sound of guitars but electronics for the piece, “Oddly Enough.” But Grdina is soon heard playing competing lead lines on two electric guitars, reflecting hallmarks often heard on Berne-led bands, and it soon becomes obvious that this is the music that can only be conceptualized by Berne.
“I Don’t Use Hair Products” is by Berne and Bill Frisell, possibly borne out of their 1984 Theoretically collaboration but never made it on the record. It sounds very much like Berne all the way, however, even more in line with his later compositions than of that time. Although on electric guitar, Grdina uses a fingerpicked approach that presents the piece in a very direct way.
Grdina plays oud for “Trauma One” with an acoustic guitar dubbed over offering mostly alternative harmonic lines. It points up to the openness of Berne’s pieces: despite the complexity of them, there are innumerable ways to play them.
The midi-guitar used in “Lost In Redding” throws off the audial illusion of an electric piano being played alongside an electric guitar. Moreover, Berne’s tangled lines that Grdina sails right through command as much attention as those somewhat strange timbres.
“Enord Krad” with the oud up front and a spectral dobro providing the backdrop sounds downright ghostly and that’s even before Grdina tosses in a desperate-sounding, overdriven electric guitar. With nothing dubbed over his electric guitar for “Snippet,” Grdina runs through another gauntlet of notes patterned in Berne’s unique language.
“Pliant Squids” is performed entirely on acoustic guitar, which makes this the most direct comparison to Belisle-Chi’s take on Berne music. Grdina, however, applies a style skewed much closer to classical guitar, an approach that works great for this kind of music.
Like the deep explorations of Tim Berne compositions undertaken on guitar by Gregg Belisle-Chi, Gordon Grdina’s own stringed-based expedition into the works of one of current jazz’s most esoteric composers sheds yet more light on the character, shape and genius contained in these scores.
Oddly Enough is now available via Bandcamp.
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