Hawktail
Formations
Padiddle Records, 2020
Starting off with a brief whisper before a wallop, Hawktail opens their new E.P. swinging into action. The title of the track, "Annbjørg," is a tip of the hat to Norwegian hardanger fiddle player Annbjørg Lien, and the basis for tune itself is from the Norwegian folk repertoire: the 'Nordfjord Halling' dance tune, named after a location in Norway. 'Hallingdans' tunes are traditionally designed to accompany a male dancer, and are a test of endurance and agility, usually ending with the dancer executing a backflip which kicks a hat off of a cane elevated above his head.
Typically, Norwegian Hallings (and Norwegian players in general) have a much more rigid and static approach to both volume and note values -- primarily a function of left-hand placement and bowing style: long/steady/static/consistent bows, and very “hammered” left hand finger work. Norwegian players often push the bow harder at the end of the stroke, swelling or steadying the volume. This is apparent in their hard kick-back of the bow, back and forth, which is a compensatory measure against volume decay that naturally exists as a function of changing bow directions. So being, the tunes can seem very rigid, but that flavor has an emotional appeal all its own. Haas’s playing is a refreshing touch on a Norwegian melody, as it skirts sensibilities both American and Scandinavian: the emotive looseness in the swing of the bow, style of slurs, and the intonation is decidedly American.
Such play with rhythm might be a dominant feature in the closure of jazz drummer's fill-in, or an Indian tabla player's solo, but is also put to great use here. The resulting affect is a clever building of tension and a 4th-dimensional viewpoint on the main melody when it re-enters.
Try as you may, you will be very hard pressed to find such detailed breakdowns & elaborations on Scandinavian albums, as it isn't part of their historic culture. Folk art coming from deep history -- including music -- is typically made *at purpose*, serving a known cultural function with given parameters. In Scandinavian folk music, a large part of the folk music is still based on purposes of social custom and dance: bridal marches, walking tunes, waltzes, memorial tunes, and a nearly endless assortment of folk dances, from Halling & springar, to Rørospols & Långdans. Any of those dances are typically tuned in tempo and rhythm to the style of a given municipality or town. Given that the music is sponsoring the momentum of the dancers, improvisation, tempo changes, and breakdowns are counter-progressive, and not done or not retained. Similar restrictions exist in other cultures as well: though a flamenco guitarist must think quickly on his feet to follow wherever a cantaor melodically goes, flamenco maestro Paco de Lucía stated in his biography that he hadn't truly improvised in his guitar playing until he toured with fellow guitarists Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin in 1981. It was their encouragement that led him to making it a regular practice. Given that restrictive tendency in many folk musics around the world (that form follows function), to have such a fantastic jam session in the middle of a Halling is a real treat.
"Last One On The Line" could be a tune considered more typical of sensibilities in American folk music... except for where it's not. Although it certainly has a very familiar toe-tapping tempo and pulse in the bass line, the complex chord progression pushes the melodic envelope into deeper harmonic waters as the song ferries along, glinting with chords more akin to gypsy jazz than bluegrass or folk. Densely-harmonic chords can be tempestuous to navigate melody through because, as beautiful as harmony is, it can also limit melodic freedom, continuity, and ease. The boundlessness of unharmonized backing is something Coltrane explored in "Alabama" by asking for nothing more than the tonic from pianist McCoy Tyner during the intro sections; an idea which he got after discussions with Ravi Shanker on the use of drones in east Indian music. Despite the dense chording in "Last One On The Line," it flows smoothly, and after a solo section the melody becomes transposed: up to B minor for a breakdown where it is re-approached with a harmony line between the bows of bass and fiddle. Once it does sit back down to A minor, the melody itself is instead introduced by Dominick playing its harmony line. Trading harmony for melody once Brittany joins in, the full band closes the tune with a shimmering cascade of melody's final bars.
Of all the tracks on Formations, it might be "Dandelion" that is the most genre-bending. Cinematic in its nature, Brittany's intro fiddle work reflects less of an old-time fiddle style, and more of an Indian violin nature with reduced meend, and with free-flowing movement. Although the first leg of the track builds, it ultimately reduces itself to a single point, before following an elusive & winding chord progression into a wall of sound. Oddly enough, one might get flashbacks of old King Crimson concerts during "Dandelion," since 'a wall of sound' was so much the nature of Crimson during the highly-improvisational power-trio era of Fripp/Bruford/Wetton. Paul Kowert's bass lines running down to the root of the chords parallels the engulfing gravity of Wetton's old bass lines. Moments of intentional (and purposeful) dissonance were also a trait of King Crimson: a choke-point of tension in the song, before it ended in either spinning out of control, or smoldered to silence. This type of tension exists in Dandelion, corralled harmonically, situated in the aura of a BbMaj7sus2 chord toward the end of the build-up, and ending with Jordan's guitar book-ending the tune as it begun.
"The Tobogganist" may be brief, but is the real breath of fresh air in the E.P.: comforting like a sea shantie sung in a safe harbor after a long voyage. It is also good to hear Jordan play some lead melody, since on many of the tracks he has a largely chordal role. The Tobogganist might just be a perfect show-closing crowd-pleaser, to send home the audience home with warmth and good vibes.
The album title itself, Formations, may allude to a musician's will to do more than exist within the ubiquitous forms: casting convention aside and getting inside the tunes to toy with the nature of it and its impact. Undoubtedly, Hawktail has broadened their palette on the Formations E.P.. What has been put to audio adds to their arsenal tunes imbued with hues not typical of the folk genres, regardless of nomenclature. The breadth of the material should be no surprise, given that all of Hawktail is masterful with their instruments. Once a musician has mastered the idioms of their own folk art, the adventurous ones inevitably head for new frontiers, on sabbatical for new forms and ideas. Such is the way that musicians become cultural ambassadors, and such is the reason why American folk tunes appear on albums in Europe, and European folk tunes appear on albums in America. That cultural mixing is the result of musicians playing and arranging tunes in ways that are undeniable: undeniable in the same sense of Van Cliburn's undeniability, by winning the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War in 1958, or undeniable in the sense of jazzers Bob Belden & Animation, who, in 2015, became the first American artist to perform in Iran since the Iranian Revolution, and was greeted with warmth. With Formations, Hawktail takes their place at the table of that undeniability.
-Seth Premo
Hawktail is:
Paul Kowert (bass)
Brittany Haas (fiddle)
Jordan Tice (guitar)
Dominick Leslie (mandolin)
https://www.hawktailmusic.com/
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