So It Goes [CD]

A straight-ahead jazz, a fastball right over the heart of the plate, and it's terrific. What's especially gratifying about this project is that it provides her the space to reveal the extent of her lyricism and to bring it to full bloom." Dave Sumner, Bird is the Worm Saxophonist Kate Olson's "So It Goes" captures the wide-open imagination and understated cool of her chord-less Seattle quartet, thriving on the interplay and invention built through steady collaboration on Northwest stages. With Tim Carey on electric bass, Evan Woodle on drums, and Connor Eisenmenger on trombone and trumpet, the band explores this set of originals with their chemistry shining on angular, bebop-inflected tunes like "All Pear Shaped" and "Bumbling Thumbs Blues," and on the buoyant grooves of "Baby Pterodactyl" and "Honk the Goose." Guests Wayne Horvitz and Geoff Harper lend warmth to the title cut, a gospel-tinged reflection on Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, and join again on the one cover tune, a radiant take of Alice Coltrane's "Translinear Light." From joyful to contemplative, Olson's Quartet values conversation over perfection, shaping a sound that's at once exploratory, organic, and deeply Northwest.