Tyler Higgins - Broken Blues (2020)

Can you imagine Charles Mingus jamming with the band Earth at a Baptist church service? No? Well, here it is, by the hands (and head) of a multi-instrumentalist in love with electric guitar feedback and the vast blues, gospel, folk, jazz and rock patrimony of that big, deep, fascinating and contradictory melting pot we call the United States of America. But no, Tyler Higgins isn’t your average fusion musician. All those music genres and styles coming from the African-American diaspora have been deeply absorbed and are decanted by experimental means so you have the feeling of the music but with the obvious reference points and sign posts removed. It sounds like a Baptist church was overrun by underground freaks and free jazz musicians ready to sing in the choir. “Broken Blues” sounds familiar, but at the same time so strange that you have to reset your brain and your ears to discover in a new way what you thought you knew all along. The 21st Century has developed its own Americana, and that’s good news. There’s a future coming, in spite of everything…