Rating: NN
After making the Blue Note suits happy by playing it relatively straight on their acoustic Tonic set, Medeski Martin & Wood get back to their confounding selves on The Dropper.
Tucked into their Brooklyn studio, the trio grind out another set of lurching jazz-funk twaddle, cramming in 10 ideas where three or four might suffice. Guests like Marshall Allen, Marc Ribot and Joan Wasser stop by to add their stuff to the tracks, and while it’s all impressively chaotic and raucously unpredictable, it’s hard to see what the point is. MMW seem to just be flexing most of the time without offering anything solid to hang onto. Maybe a better groove will appear when Medeski Martin & Wood host the Guvernment Sunday (December 3). MG
