Rather than striking a softer note with the rather down-tempo “Lament,” even this slower song from Project Grand Slam’s The Shakespeare Concert sees the Robert Miller-fronted fusion act putting in a lot more muscle than you might be expecting. Just when it feels like things are about to mellow in the balladic “Juliet Dances,” the band is seemingly ready to turn the heat up as high as they would in “I’m Falling Off of the World,” the song that leads the tracklist and essentially sets a warm tone for everything soon to follow.
The Shakespeare Concert, despite its titling, is a recreation of a live show recorded in the studio, but you would likely never know as much without Project Grand Slam volunteering the information to you – after all, with the intensity the devote to “Take Me” and “No No No” alone, it’s easy to assume they’re feeding off of a crowd rather than just each other. There’s something to be said about a group of musicians as committed to the notion of originality as this; willing to reimagine old material while experimenting with new concepts, PGS delivers a record here that stands out like a Greatest Hits comp and then some.
“New York City Groove” is ironically packing more of a punch in this version than the cover of “Fire” is, but both songs benefit from a pushy bassline courtesy of Robert Miller himself, who sounds particularly on point in every one of these recordings. There’s no stoppage between the tracks – we keep flowing from one to the next just as we would in a concert setting, with “It Is a Miracle to Me,” “Yeah Yeah,” “My Baby,” and “Lament” shaping out like an extended medley simply broken up for the purposes of an album. There’s a lot of contrast in the likes of “Stockbridge Fanfare” and “Take Me,” but it only serves to make the tension we discover in “The One I’m Not Supposed to See” and “Fire” a little more powerful. The balance to be enjoyed in The Shakespeare Concert is reason enough to give it a close listen, but personally, I think it’s just the tipping point of why this record feels as incredible as it does, even after repeat listens.
As someone who has been listening to Project Grand Slam for a while, going back well before “Redemption Road” captured my heart a couple of years ago, there, I can honestly say that I had really high hopes for what The Shakespeare Concert was going to consist of, and for being an album that was recorded during COVID under conditions that don’t normally do musicians of this style many favors, it’s a grand slam out of the park if I’ve ever heard one before. There’s still a lot for this particular group of musicians to explore within each other, given the regular changes to Miller’s lineup in PGS, but I think this captures every essential reason why they deserve to be highlighted as the premier jazz/rock group of the underground today.
Rachel Townsend