East by Midwest

4 STARS

A bracing guitar/bass/drums trio outing from guitarist Charlie Ballantine, East by Midwest, sounds as if it was recorded in a large, high-ceilinged warehouse with a cement floor, that floor buffed into the next dimension to a high polish, this giving the music a beautiful resonance. Retro? Think Link Wray or Dick Dale and The Deltones. Modernistic? Think John Abercrombie on some of his early ECM Records efforts. Or Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Ballantine and his cohorts—drummer Dan Weiss and bassist Quinn Sternberg—dig into the stripped- down trio sound and come up with a distinctive brand. The guitar is raw, rough around the edges, like the sound of the guitarists heard on the early blues albums out of Chess Records—Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar sidekick from the early '50s onward, or even Wolf (on guitar) himself, with those ragged, ringing edges.

Ballantine offers five covers and four originals. Opening with his "Storyteller," he sets a laid-back country mood, sitting on the back porch swapping tales. "Runaround" is tart and freewheeling.. Thelonious Monk's "Trinkle Tinkle" gives Ballantine a chance to display a loose-edged virtuosity.

The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" is one of that group's stranger and seemingly unrecoverable tunes. And for the record, it may be its best. Ballantine and company turn it into a small masterpiece here, with big fat, metallic chords and reverence for the melody, starting in a sedate manner before Ballantine starts ripping, making it a ballsy anthem, the way Jimi Hendrix took Bob Dylan's serene "All Along The Watchtower" into the stratosphere in 1968. "Tomorrow Never Knows," also from the Beatles' songbook, is ominous, like a bad moon risin'—the actual astronomical event, not the John Fogarty tune. Ballantine could have made an entire disc of Beatles music, in the manner of Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles (Nonesuch, 2023). He did it for Dylan.

Ornette Coleman's "When Will The Blues Leave" snaps and pops, Ballantine's Wes Montgomery-like, searing single notes burning holes in the stereo speakers.

Rocker Elliot Smith's "Alameda" closes the show with a groove beneath a delicate, pretty melody, as if a semblance of peace has been found, wrapping up an excellent, atmospherically cohesive guitar trio outing.