The second album by this six-piece band from Vancouver led by cellist Peggy Lee, Sounds From the Big House is something of an extended essay on the drifting, plangent side of Bill Frisell; even the titles are reminiscent of Frisell’s: “Go Dog Go”; “Bug Hunt”; “Horse’s Dream.” Lee’s moody, delicately voiced arrangements exploit the lovely timbral blend of trumpet, trombone and cello, with Tony Wilson’s guitar – the band’s real lynchpin – sometimes joining them, sometimes working in tandem with the electric bass and drums. Solos are part of this larger compositional fabric, rather than automatically seizing the foreground. There’s a couple small-group improvisations that get hung up on atmospherics, but the full-band tracks are very fine, with a misterioso grandeur I find very attractive. The two main exceptions to the Frisellian mood are, surprisingly, the first and last tracks: the first section of “Rock Paper Scissors” sets parodic movie-soundtrack-style bombast against a comically busy clarinet-marimba line (perhaps a nod to Frank Zappa?), while “Go Dog Go” closes the album on unexpectedly straightahead jazz-rock, angular and brassy. An accomplished and enjoyable album.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, Sep 2002