The Impossible Gentlemen infused their customary virtuosic lyricism with an elated funkiness on their four-night Pizza Express run, playing as if they were like-minded strangers delightedly discovering each other on a late-night jam. With Gwilym Simcock on bluesy organ as much as the piano, the whole group grippingly balanced delicacy and hard-rocking muscle.
The music of Pat Metheny is often an audible influence (Mike Walker takes a guitarist's interest, Simcock a composer's, and bassist Steve Rodby is a long-standing Metheny associate), and Simcock's Modern Day Heroes and Just to See You reflected it in the former's breezily grooving theme and the latter's country-tinged basslines. Simcock (switching from piano to organ midway) soon began a back-and-forth banter with Walker on Modern Day Heroes, and he and the guitarist patiently built the delicate ballad melody of Just to See You from a mix of organ hummings, soft guitar chords and tremolo sighs to a rocking crescendo over robust bass and busy brushwork. You Won't Be Around to See It began by suggesting what a Thelonious Monk tune might have sounded like in the electric-jazz era (Walker playing at such fearless angles to the harmony that the whole solo began to hang on just when he might get back to the root note), and a straight-swing section found all four players at full exuberant gallop.
The guitarist's Wallenda's Last Stand, with its wistfully free-falling final descent, was more evocatively cinematic than in previous incarnations, and the choppy, tumultuous Heute Loiter brought an exultantly swelling organ break from Simcock over Nussbaum's remorselessly bumpy drums. The band's new album, Internationally Recognised Aliens, displays their increasingly collaborative composing, but on this evidence a live album would be something to relish. (The Guardian)