Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious

Seattle has one of America's most diverse and well-established experimental music scenes, providing a striking comparison now to the city's over-analyzed grunge explosion of the early '90s. Indeed, among the current whole, the former logging city has a pretty impressive under-the-radar jazz scene. Bassist Kelsey Mines, who was born and raised in The Emerald city, fits right within the progressive ethos of its music community. Over the past decade or so, Mines has traversed across wide-ranging genres and stylings. She has dabbled in lo-fi electro-pop and classical chamber music and is currently a member of the indie rock supergroup Drink the Sea with (among others) R.E.M. 's Peter Buck. These projects may possess varying degrees of accessibility, but they are never uninteresting.

This past year, the prolific Mines (who recently has moved to NYC) released several new recordings, none of which fit together and all of which reflect the exciting range that she continuously displays. On Collusion and Collaboration, she partners with legendary free-form, avant garde multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia on a series of stripped-down, minimalist, improvised pieces that perfectly meld together Mines' bass with a number of woodwinds wielded by Golia, including flute, clarinet and sopranino saxophone. additionally, Mines often also contributes vocal chanting to complete the mix. The results are highly intimate and often atonal, but never abrasive. In particular, her vocals often work to soften the occasional shrillness of her partner's falsetto tones. "Improv 5" (which is not the fifth track; the song titles are numbered but presented out of order) sounds otherworldly, but ultimately soulful. "Improv 7" reminds listeners of free jazz' heyday, with Mines approximating a walking bassline underneath Golia's gritty and striking, yet highly disciplined, tones.

Demonstrating Mines' extreme flexibility, where Collusion and Collaboration is challenging and at times discordant, Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious is groovy and darn right pleasing: the latter's album title perfectly summarizes the duality of these two records. While always jazz-adjacent, Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious represents the bassist's first pure, straight-ahead exercise in the genre. Mines (who composed all songs and again provides vocals) and her largely Pacific Northwest-based group: Elsa Nilsson (flute, bass flute), Beserat Tafesse (trombone), John Hansen (piano), Danilo Silva (guitar) and Jeff Busch (drums), create an atmosphere of retro-cool, with Nilsson's breathy, featured flute in the limelight. The title track is a lovely tribute to the halcyon days of '60s bossa nova, and "Staying with the Trouble" evokes images of naturalistic post-noir '70s cinema. "até" is a breezily spiritual duet between Mines' vocals and Nilsson, with Hansen's piano providing the foundation; the song certainly extols Seattle's forward-thinking musical landscape, but not without also offering listeners a relaxed beauty as well.