Souvenir de Mauve

Released on Tenniscoats’ Majikick label, Souvenir De Mauve is one of Maher Shalal Hash Baz’s most surprising, expansive albums, in a catalog that’s not short of such things. It’s front-loaded with some of leader Tori Kudo’s most arresting pop songs – the sideways shuffle of “After The Funfair’s Gone,” the bluesy stutter of “A Boogie,” the halting clatter of “Deer” – but this soon makes way for an extended set of piano improvisations by Kudo that swallow up nearly forty minutes of the playing time. They’re meandering things, Kudo playing as though the notes have just dropped from the air into his consciousness, and while you can hear that he’s been informed by jazz and classical in the way he phrases his playing, there’s nothing to really compare them to, ultimately – it’s pure Kudo logic. A closing revisitation of “A Boogie” re-centres the listener in the pop world of Maher. But those piano pieces, with their ruminative spirit, resonate well beyond the moment where you hit stop.