Consider the strange physics of being a passenger: You’re at once in motion and at rest, paradoxically traveling without moving. Scenery hurries by your window. Sometimes your eyes unfocus, scanning a flattened blur of color; other times they might zero in on a road sign or a single leaf, following it out of frame. When you arrive, it’s as if time and space are just behind your shoulder, catching up. That’s the feeling of listening to That Wasn’t a Dream, the spacious and surreal new album from Pino Palladino and Blake Mills. Each song achieves stillness through constant movement and resolution through continuous tension. Isolated melodies occasionally blend into a harmonic cloud before separating once again, drifting nebulously yet highly organized.
The jazz duo’s first record, 2021’s Notes With Attachments, mined similar territory, if a bit busier. Its compositions had the brisk motion of a crowded city sidewalk rather than the hazy liminality of a long train ride. Palladino, the 67-year-old Welsh sideman who’s played with D’Angelo, Don Henley, and De La Soul, hooked his basslines around syncopated percussion and legato tones. Mills, a sought-after producer who’s worked with Beck, Fiona Apple, and Alabama Shakes, carefully inserted staccato guitar plucks between the gaps in rhythmic lines. Alongside a who’s who of contemporary jazz musicians, including saxophonist Sam Gendel and drummer Chris Dave, Palladino and Mills constructed wholly new shapes out of interlocking elements. On That Wasn’t a Dream, they started with similarly complex arrangements but methodically disassembled them, leaving plenty of air between each sound. “If we could make something work with the least possible ingredients, space could become the centerpiece,” Palladino said in a statement. The result is a sparse, enchanting record where time passes circuitously and phrases brush against each other like branches in the wind.
The grooves on Notes With Attachments could be spiky and nonintuitive, locking deeper into place with each additional layer. Here, Palladino and Mills operate with more restraint, patiently allowing a pocket to develop from a small handful of notes. That often means spotlighting the drums for several bars, cyclical patterns settling like a topsheet wafted above a mattress. The first 10 seconds of “What Is Wrong With You” establish its lysergic lurch with a simple combination of quarter-note hi-hats and a gently swinging kick drum. Palladino’s four-note bassline leaves a wide margin between the downbeat and the end of each measure; Mills’ baritone guitar melody slithers into view, smearing the tune together like a gestural painting. Midway through “Taka,” a bubbling stew of electro-funk, the synth and bass drop out completely, leaving a drum-machine sequence and percussion that sounds like clinking wine glasses to churn in place unimpeded.
