Michele Thomas - The Assumption (2022)

The overarching theme of The Assumption is how we perceive trust in various relational situations, from familial ties, to intimate connections, to how we interact and view the government. The Black Lives Matter movement looms large in this album, as do notions of sexism, and even, subtly, the very idea of what is jazz music—does Blind Faith’s rock standard “Can’t Find My Way Home” belong on a jazz album? The answer is, yes, it’s a stunning closer, much like it made for an explosive finale during Michele’s live performance at The Chicago Jazz Festival.

The Assumption is trisected into song suites. Its first three tracks pose and grapple with notions of trust within ourselves and outside of ourselves. The album opener, “No More” (Laws/Hendricks), is an empowering anthem of individuality. The rousing song has a gospel pulse coursing through it with horn section punctuations, and a simmering rhythm section that grooves like a soul band but harnesses jazz finesse and sense of dynamics. The seductive “Love Dance” (Lins/Peranzzetta/Martins) swings mightily, but also showcases a sly R&B influence—like Michele snuck an R&B ballad inside a mid-tempo jazz tune. Here, her vocals ooze soulful longing while they gracefully ease through the changes and the intricate vocal melody.

The standout of this three-song suite is “I Know Because You Told Me So,” written by Michele Thomas and Damian Espinosa. Here, neo-soul and jazz prove perfect bedfellows as Michele subtly recalls the silken musicality of Jill Scott and Erykah Badu. The song has become a live favorite, and many fans feel it’s a bold declaration of confidence. Yet, for Michele, it’s almost a self-talk song with her grappling with being neurotic, keeping her ego at bay while also feeling a sense of self-possession.

In The Assumption’s second chapter, Michele addresses notions of trust and love from a personal standpoint. On the original, “These Days,” Michele with bold vulnerability addresses the losses of her sister and mother. She captures the all-consuming pain with lyric lines such as: these days are so much shorter since you’ve been gone But I’m standing much taller than I had before/Who knew that your shoulders stayed beneath my feet all along?

The smoky original “Plot & Stone” spotlights Michele’s expansive vocal stylings. Here, she eases through melodious speak-sing passages and soars with flights of fiery vocal musicality showcasing her powerhouse vocals. This is a song about visiting her father’s gravesite 27 years after his passing, and the uneasy peace she’s been forced to make with his life and death.

The smoldering, “Dark,” features stunning moments of vibrato vocalizing and stylistically melds jazz sophistication with gospel purposefulness. This song was written to counter the racist/white supremacist ideologies that have pervaded our socialization for centuries. These ideologies have attached all things evil and deadly to what is essentially a color; black. And then that color was attached to a portion of the human race. Michele’s response to this is nothing exists without darkness. Life, healing, and, even, light come from darkness. Her lyrics here are viscerally poetic, one standout passage reads: Black is the scab/Black is the seal that protects your wounds/and keeps the light from burning what is yet too weak to heal/the flesh and bone discerning when the veil of time reveals/Only fools scratch it away.

A centerpiece of this portion is “Spiral” which is a John Coltrane composition from his seismic album, Giant Steps. For Michele, the music’s descending melodies evokes the feeling of falling into an abyss, and that mirrored the overall challenges women face to have their voices heard amidst all of the inequities in our society. These feelings are powerfully epitomized by the lyrics: Bellowing into the void of the noise and the night of the lies, she said these words.

The third and final installment of the album is the resolution section. This is about understanding one’s place in the world, and while this section is the most consistently “straight ahead,” it concludes with Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” which almost passes as a soul-jazz standard. On “Autumn Nocturne,” Michele taps into the black-and-white-movie romance of classic jazz vocal recordings. Here, her voice is delicately powerful as she conjures the longing inherent in the composition. The song “I Carry” features an E.E. Cummings poem adapted to music written by her close collaborator Damian Espinosa. It also boasts a cameo by singer-songwriter/sound healer Davin Youngs on heavenly background vocals. It fits perfectly between “Autumn Nocturne” and a bubbly swinging version of the Kern/Hammerstein standard, “Nobody Else But Me.” The album concludes with a driving ballad version of “Can’t Find My Way Home” fitted with a clever odd-meter beat that grooves so hard you don’t notice its curious pulse.

The Assumption features Michele’s band which includes A-list Chicago session and jazz musicians. The personnel here is Chris Mahieu, Rhodes piano; Chris Greene, saxophones; Clark Sommers, bass; Neal Alger, guitar; Jeff Hedberg, trumpet; and Darren Scorza, drums. Darren produced The Assumption; served as the album’s mixing and mastering engineer; arranged many of the non-originals; and contributed horn arrangements. He’s also Michele’s husband and the couple have been primary collaborators longer than the length of their 17-plus year marriage. Throughout the album, the band engages in telepathic musical interplay. They are delicately supportive of Michele’s vocals and her emotional intent, but also engage in their own musical dialogues, keeping with the in-the-moment grandeur of jazz.

These days we need an art form as pliable and potent as jazz. We are in a time of radical change, and we need our music alive and pushing forward with innovation. The Assumption is an album for these fiery times. While it respects a tradition, it asks us soulfully: What comes next?

~ Lorne Behrman