High Pulp, “All Roads Lead to Los Angeles (feat. Jaleel Shaw)” (ANTI-)

Back in February 2020, I wrote in The Stranger that Seattle's large, multifarious group High Pulp were “poised to go big.” They took a giant step toward that status by getting signed to the indie label ANTI-, home to esteemed artists such as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Mavis Staples, Kate Bush, Tinariwen, and Moor Mother. However, High Pulp's debut album for the company, Pursuit of Ends (out April 15, with cover art by the most excellent Robert Beatty), certainly isn't tailor-made for the pop charts. Rather, the 10-track LP abounds with the sort of rhythmically complex and melodically sophisticated instrumentals that reigned during jazz fusion's mid-'70s heyday.

That being said, High Pulp's music is not mere virtuosity flexing for its own sake. The six core musicians—plus guests such as harpist Brandee Younger and saxophonist Jaleel Shaw—imbue their labyrinthine compositions with a soulfulness that can't be taught at the conservatory. If not geared for the charts, High Pulp's tracks could fruitfully slot into in any number of cinematic situations.

You can hear High Pulp's mellow, melodious gifts burgeon on “Blaming Mercury” and “Window to a Shimmering World”; both are slow-blooming spores of rapture that redeem the slur “smooth jazz,” akin to It's All Around You-era Tortoise tracks on a Herb Alpert budget. Conversely, cuts such as “Kamishinjo” and “You've Got to Pull It Up from the Ground” intricately funk up the room with broken-beat verve and the panache of Return to Forever drummer Lenny White. “Wax Hands,” which bumps with subliminal industriousness and swirls opulently like an outtake from Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders/London Symphony Orchestra's acclaimed 2021 opus, Promises. Brandee Younger—who's played with Ravi Coltrane and the Roots—lavishes harp fairy dust over the top, frosting this delicious, multilayered cake into a rarefied treat. “Wax Hands” feels as if it's moving in at least three different directions at once, all of them leading to exalted realms.

"All Roads Lead to Los Angeles" is perhaps the most mercurial and action-packed cut on Pursuit of Ends. Bobby Granfelt's beats skitter with the nimble, geometric tumble of the most elegant and fast-twitch-muscled '90s drum & bass while Shaw emits skeins and flutters of soulful sax filigree, a display of whirlwind melodic inventiveness and breath control that should silence the "jazz is dead" crowd.

Granfelt—who also performs with the great sunking—says of Pursuit of Ends, “We were trying to distill how it felt to exist in the midst of all the chaos and confusion unfolding around us with these songs. The music was our medicine.” It very well could be yours, too.

High Pulp open for Genesis Owusu on Friday March 25 at Neumos.

Kamikaze Palm Tree, “Flamingo” (Drag City)

Nothing like receiving a press release from a venerable label about a totally unknown, new artist and having said artist gently blow your mind. Such was the case with brand-new Drag City Records phenoms Kamikaze Palm Tree. (They had me at “Kamikaze Palm Tree,” to be honest.) “Flamingo” is the handiwork of Los Angeles guitarist Cole Berliner and drummer/vocalist Dylan Hadley (the latter's played with the great White Fence). The song sounds somewhat anomalous on Drag City's roster of mostly road-tested veterans and legacy acts who generally skew harder, dirtier, heavier, and more furrow-browed. Which is not to say the Chicago company hasn't dabbled in whimsy before, but simply that this is not its usual aesthetic. As always with Drag City, implicit trust in its signings yields rewards.

KPT's 2019 debut album, Good Boy, established their skewed rock approach, in which oddly tuned guitar, bass, and xylophone swerve and wobble with staccato verve while Hadley sings like a worldly waif; she flaunts one of the liveliest deadpan deliveries in rock today. The music is a weird—possibly even a unique—blend of Frank Zappa-esque chordal complexity and rhythmic jaggedness and the woozy dub bass and childlike vocal wonder of post-punk mavericks/Kurt Cobain faves Raincoats. That aesthetic blessedly continues on “Flamingo,” an affectionate punch to your earbones that's more addictive than schadenfreude. The lyrics are ludicrously baffling, but who cares when the music's this enchanting? Right now, “Flamingo” has the inside track on being the song of the first fiscal quarter.