Brad Mehldau's new album is an almost doggedly unshowy affair, opening with the pianist's own composition Spiral which eschews any kind of high jinks for a kind of steady-as-she-goes applied science. The title track, Seymour Reads the Constitution is a gentle New Orleans-tinged swing affair, which you could imagine the late Alan Toussaint warming to.
By way of contrast, it should be noted that there is a plethora of North European pianists around nowadays - nearly all of them on the ECM label - who deal in the ethereal and the numinous-luminous. It is not Mehldau's way of doing things. There are three Mehldau originals here, but much of the time he is in American heritage harness, which, however, is not to imply any form of constriction. The pianist is browsing in the Great American Songbook for his high-spirited reading of Frederick Loewe Almost Like Being in Love which is followed by a convivial stride through Elmo Hope's quaintly bluesy De-Dah.
Interpretations of Paul McCartney's Great Day and Brian Wilson's Friends also feature, the latter particularly sweet and plangent and, well, nice, the pianist doing some wonderful runs with that busy right hand.
