There are jazz albums that make you want to sit very still, stroke an imaginary goatee and whisper something about “the harmonic language.”
And then there’s Casey Abrams’ #Jazz, an album that occasionally sounds like somebody gave an extremely talented group of musicians instruments, caffeine and permission to make absolutely whatever they wanted.
Thank God they did.
Abrams has always occupied a wonderfully strange corner of the musical universe. He plays upright bass. He sings. He plays piano, guitar and clarinet. He improvises. He makes weird noises. He once turned a broken dryer into a viral musical collaborator. He has performed with world-class musicians, appeared on American Idol, racked up millions upon millions of views with Postmodern Jukebox and somehow maintains the energy of a guy who might interrupt a sophisticated jazz session because he just discovered that the Tic Tacs in his pocket make a pretty decent shaker.
In fact, that last one actually happened.
That spirit is basically the thesis of #Jazz: jazz can be seriously good without taking itself terribly seriously.
Produced alongside Davy Nathan, the 11-track album is loose, warm, mischievous and impressively difficult to pin down. Abrams jumps between swing, bebop, salsa, neo-soul, pop, vocal harmony and whatever genre one assigns to “Casey Abrams having an idea and everyone deciding to go with it.”
Somehow, it works.
Part of that is because beneath all the silliness is an enormous amount of musicianship. Abrams studied at Idyllwild Arts Academy under legendary bassist Marshall Hawkins, whose own résumé includes Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. Jazz isn’t a costume Abrams decided to put on for an album. It’s baked into the way he approaches music: listen, react, improvise and leave enough room for something unexpected to happen.
And unexpected things happen constantly on #Jazz.
“Pizza” — yes, there is a jazz song called “Pizza” — lets Abrams hop between upright bass, guitar and clarinet with the enthusiasm of someone who has never once been told that perhaps one instrument would be sufficient.
“I Choose You” wanders toward the lush neo-soul universe of D’Angelo while playing with the sort of adventurous harmonies associated with Jacob Collier. “Love Is the Song” brings salsa into the party, because apparently this party did not already have enough going on.
Then there’s “Can’t Buy Me Love,” where Abrams takes one of the most recognizable Beatles songs on Earth and invites Haley Reinhart, Rebecca Jade, Charles Jones and Harry Reinhart along for the ride. Rather than treating the original like a museum piece, they toss it around like musicians having an extremely good night after somebody said, “Okay, but what if we did THIS?”
That sense of play is important because #Jazz could easily have become an exercise in showing off.
The personnel certainly have the credentials for it. Two-time GRAMMY® winner Taylor Eigsti appears on the record. GRAMMY®-winning trumpeter David Longoria joins Abrams on “You Got Me Smiling.” Haley Reinhart brings her unmistakable voice and arranging chops into the mix, while Nora Germain, Rebecca Jade, Charles Jones, Jacob Scesney and Harry Reinhart help populate an album overflowing with personality.
Yet nobody seems particularly interested in standing in the middle of the room screaming, “LOOK HOW GOOD I AM AT MUSIC.”
They just are.
And that makes the virtuosity much more fun.
Abrams is also smart enough to know that nonstop musical chaos would eventually become exhausting. Beneath all the genre-hopping and Tic Tac percussion, #Jazz has a surprisingly sentimental heart.
“Lifetime” pulls from his relationship with girlfriend Laura, while “You Got Me Smiling” deals with the strange, almost disorienting joy of finding love after emerging from a darker chapter. Taylor Eigsti joins Abrams for “Really Saying Something,” a collaboration that helped push Abrams toward fully embracing the jazz identity of this project.
By the time the album reaches “Idyllwild,” the jokes have quieted down.
Named for the California mountain town where Abrams grew up, the closing track looks back toward family, childhood and Marshall Hawkins, the mentor who helped give him his musical foundation. Saxophonist Jacob Scesney, another student of Hawkins, joins him, giving the finale the feeling of a musical circle closing.
It’s unexpectedly sweet.
It also explains why all the experimentation before it works.
Abrams isn’t trying to escape jazz. He’s comfortable enough inside it to mess with it.
That’s a meaningful distinction.
For all the discussion about preserving jazz tradition, jazz itself has never exactly been famous for following instructions. Improvisation, personality, conversation and risk are the whole point. #Jazz understands that tradition doesn’t have to mean behaving yourself.
So Abrams brings in Beatles songs.
He brings in neo-soul.
He brings in salsa.
He brings in barbershop-style harmonies.
He brings in his girlfriend, his hometown, his friends and an alarming number of instruments.
He brings in Tic Tacs.
Of course he brings in Tic Tacs.
The result is an album that feels refreshingly human in an era when records can sometimes arrive polished until every fingerprint has been scrubbed away. You can practically hear musicians grinning at each other on #Jazz. Ideas are allowed to be weird. Performances are allowed to breathe. Humor isn’t treated as the enemy of sophistication.
Most importantly, Abrams sounds completely at home.
After American Idol, Billboard-charting records, Postmodern Jukebox, international tours, viral videos and a career spent gleefully bouncing between musical worlds, he has ended up back where he started.
Jazz.
Just not the kind that asks you to sit quietly.
#Jazz would rather pull up another chair, order a pizza, shake the Tic Tacs and see what happens.
And somehow, against all reasonable expectations, it swings.
Listen on DSP’s HERE
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