Ben Monder: Day After Day
Richard Gehr on May 29, 2019
Jazz guitarist Ben Monder goes deep and wide on Day After Day. The double album of standards and pop tunes is divided into solo and trio formats, and I suggest entering el mundo Monder via his tightly entrained threesome with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Ted Poor. Monder shifts fiercely into creative overdrive in the middle of Jimmy Webb’s “Galveston,” displays all sorts of exciting acid-rock acumen on “Goldfinger,” and steers Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” onto stirring new emotional terrain. Monder’s more meditative electric solo set, on the other hand, is almost religious in its potent harmonic architechtonics.
