Click here to buy from: VINTAGE VINYL "John Maxfield is a master of his craft." - Playback Magazine

THE PLAYBACK MAGAZINE REVIEW:

John Maxfield "Hullabalooga"(Tantrum Niche)

Life is full of surprises.   I knew John Maxfield was a gifted musician, but I didn't know he was a one-man jazz ensemble, or so it appears on Hullabalooga .   Well, if that's what was he out to prove on the more adventurous selections on Hullabalooga then I am convinced.   There is some excellent vintage 70's lounge jazz on this record.   It's fun music to kick back and take in, whimsical, and yet highly accomplished.   Three tracks deep and nary a guitar is found, supplanted by piano and horns dancing around in-the-pocket drumming and fluidly melodic bass playing.   It's so laid back and effortless it feels just a little indulgent because, unlike more pedestrian lounge music there's a vibrancy and energy that gives these lounge jazz tracks zest.   That zest keeps it from sounding like dinner music, and makes it feel like a break-beat record cut live with a band pretending they were a DJ.  

Then out of nowhere we get a Frank Zappa meets Stevie Wonder curve-ball by the name of Back On the Bus.   It's actually fun and a pretty cool groove, but after the smooth sophistication of Theme to Hullabalooga, Tumbling Down, and I Miss Her, the unbridled eccentricities of some of the elements of Back On the Bus knock you off kilter.   So when Total Disaster follows, it's even more surreal, cause it's an excellent and very melancholy tune, as energized as all the others, but in a different way, feeling like be best kind of understated Indie rock, not out of place on Death Cab for Cutie's Barsuk records.

Does that prepare you for Lord Have Mercy, the Country Rock two-step that follows it?   Of course not, but it's an equally energetic performance.   It's a very fun song, full of whimsy, some down home slide guitar that the Rolling Stones forgot how to put down 25 years ago.   The Rolling Stones definitely don't produce anything as blissed-out and yet as lively as Things Were Different, which slips yet another instrument to the mix, harmonica, in a setting I would not have expected, and yet it works perfectly. When the John Maxfield I'd expected all along emerges on Black and Blue, all the aforementioned diversity undermines my appreciation for his ability to craft solid college rock tunes.   The fact that for the first time on Hullabalooga these kind of songs come in succession is almost a shock , but to close with So Long, a nice mellow rock tune, brings the point home that John Maxfield is a master of his craft.   A musician's musician, he can do most anything he wants, but at the end of the day he's a songwriter and that talent shines through no matter what idiom he embraces. To get a greater appreciation of his gift, you have to see how it translates live at Cicero's on December 27th .  

RIYL

Ben Folds, Michael Penn, Cake

-Will E. Smith

THE RIVERFRONT TIMES REVIEW:

Airy, open piano chords, brushed drums and organ accents usher in John Maxfield's latest record with the cocktail-jazz instrumental "Theme to Hullabalooga," a sly hint that the album may be more ambitious than most of its rock/pop contemporaries. In a way, it is different; the album relies more on the soft edges of piano jazz. And as it does on Joe Jackson's Night & Day, this trope pairs nicely with classic pop songcraft - but only when Maxfield lets pop structures trump the jazz flourishes.