Polar Bear With Jyager - Common Ground

Blimey, this is unexpected. First, honest, reaction to a Polar Bear album? Christ. The review was half-written before a (not-blue-enough) note was heard; complaints about polite middle-class jazz, an antagonistic mention of Jamie Cullum, which would obviously lead to some entirely inappropriate musing on the delicious Miss Dahl and then on to a yearning for the huge, dirty, jazz energy and kicks that made Sal Paradise sweat, whoop and holler. Nice clever boys being oh-so-clever and oh-so-nice was never ever going to do the business, and that soul-crushingly horrible phrase ‘post-jazz’ was always going to be lurking in the shadows.

It’s samples from a vinyl copy of Polar Bear’s Mercury Prize illuminated moment in the sun, ‘Peepers’, that ‘Common Ground’ is chiselled out from, with Jyager invited in to supply vocals and, you‘d assume, a bit of credibility. It makes sense, this coming together of hip-hop and jazz. Probably the two genres that operate most without text book, where the need to push forward and innovate and, yeah, to just simply show-off is rewarded and revered like no other. Where standing still is going backwards. And, the yearning for dirty jazz energy, for the sound of the street not the sound of the coffee table? Well this, thrillingly, is positively filthy. Instinctively you give the credit to Jyager, you assume he’s come in, done his grimey thing and corrupted sweet ol’ Seb Rochford and his preposterous barnet. Don‘t trust those instincts. As key as Jyager’s contribution is here - perfectly matching the tone of each track; sometimes playful, sometimes choking in a smoky haze but mostly as bleak as a Midlands industrial estate car park - it’s Mr Polar Bear that’s got to take the credit, for it’s him that dictates the mood.

Whatever’s left of ‘Peepers’ is haphazardly pieced together like a pitch black jigsaw with no straight edges and all the connecters gnarled, chewed and twisted. Put that fucker back together properly eh? Or don’t. Maybe just hammer the pieces down, daub it in tar, create something that was never meant to exist from it’s starting point. The rough edges become the point, the occasional gaps let chinks of light in. It jerks, rumbles and slowly jars along, recalls when Mo-Wax used to matter and the super-stoned roll of Cypress Hill’s murkier moments. And if those references sound out-dated then forget it because this is entirely of its time, revelling in an era where musical boundaries are blurred beyond recognition. Can you call it jazz? Does the presence of Rochford make it so, or that of Jyager make it grime? Does it need labelling? Does it matter? Hell no. This is original, daring, endlessly creative and bold. This, well, this is astonishing. Blimey.