ALBUM REVIEWS
A Heartfelt Homage to Coltrane
By  Leonard Reed

Los Angeles Times   Sunday October 29, 1995
Home Edition
Calendar, Page 68
Type of Material: Recording Review


JOHN McLAUGHLIN

   "After the Rain"

    Verve

   * * *

   "After the Rain" is a trio recording that does double duty as homage
to John Coltrane and context for McLaughlin's singular guitar vocabulary
of lightning gossamer runs, dark chordal shadings, jagged and dense
melodic lines and long, echoey silences. He has done the homage thing
before--his "Time Remembered" recording celebrated the elegant pianist
Bill Evans, and "Unity" bowed to the late and understated organist Larry
Young.

   But this one sounds closer to McLaughlin's musical heart. He is teamed
with Elvin Jones, a firestorm as his own bandleader and polyrhythmic
timekeeper as drummer in Coltrane's classic quartet of the early '60s,
and Joey DeFrancesco, a young organist whose arrival on the jazz scene in
the '80s was marked by flamboyance and here shows a restraint to match
his obvious talent.

   There are a few non-Coltrane tunes, notable among them Carla Bley's
"Sing Me Softly of the Blues," in a molasses-slow treatment driven by
DeFrancesco's deft bass line and Jones' sly whole-note strikes of the
ride cymbal. But it is the Coltrane standards that give this CD its
fecund, improvisational center, with the sole exception an "Afro Blue"
bleached clean by too much sweetness.

   Nothing surpasses the title tune, among Coltrane's most spiritual of
compositions. McLaughlin brings much of what he is--from his Miles Davis
"Bitches Brew" edge to his Sri Chinmoy contemplative devotions--to bear.
In a complex, poignant arrangement that goes from darkness to light,
Jones' massive, orchestral drumming surges forward and pulls back while
McLaughlin moves within the melody and outside it, coloring and shading,
using lone notes and thick chords to reach for the possible.

   McLaughlin is never in a rush. That is a lucky thing. The ineffable
mystery of these classic works invites ruminative playing, and who among
guitarists but McLaughlin would ably take them out so far?

    Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair),
three stars (good, recommended), four stars (excellent).




Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times, 1995.

Liebenson, Donald, ALBUM REVIEWS; A Heartfelt Homage to Coltrane; Home Edition., Los Angeles Times, 10-29-1995, pp 68.