Sam Wilkes - Public Records Performance - Wilkes Records 003

It’s August 2022. Bassist and composer Sam Wilkes learns through his bandmate, Will Graefe, that avant-garde stalwart Shahzad Ismaily wants to sit in during their upcoming performance at Brooklyn’s Public Records. Shahzad is a legend, but Wilkes is nonplussed at the request. This is Wilkes' first headline show in his birthplace of New York City and the setlist is set. Anyway, he doesn't typically take impromptu guests. After mulling it over for a day, Wilkes delivers an ultimatum: If Shahzad is willing to play the soprano voice in the three-part harmony of the outro guitar solo from "The Boys Are Back in Town" on his synth during set-closer "TODAY," he can join in. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shahzad obliges, and they set up a rehearsal date.

Flip on the last track of side B of Public Records Performance (out 10/24 on Wilkes Records) and you'll hear the lick emerge from Wilkes' own composition like chickweed between bricks. It's jarring, yet so perfectly ingrained in the music that you'd think Wilkes came up with the melody himself, or else invented independently. Days before the performance, at the rehearsal between Wilkes, Graefe, and Shahzad, the latter showed up shirtless, holding his Moog Rogue in one arm and a to-go stack of plain buckwheat pancakes in the other. Graefe introduced them, and a vibe was midwifed into the world. When Wilkes and his band took the stage at Public Records that fateful Saturday, it was only broadcast for the first time.

Public Records Performance is a transmission from that sweltering evening, where the sold-out crowd in the venue's plywood-panelled Sound Room inspired the kind of restless energy you can't rehearse for. At 27 minutes and 7 songs, the album is short by concert standards. But it hits like a full-length, a snappy document of a musician at the height of a prolific streak. At this point in the summer of 2022, Wilkes had already recorded both The Doober—his duo album with saxophonist and frequent collaborator Sam Gendel—and played bass on Louis Cole’s symphonic opus Nothing. Perhaps because of that, Public Records Performance doesn’t bear the burden of a grand unveiling. Songs arrive, do their work, and dissolve. The band forms a tight, conversational unit: Wilkes on Fender bass and composition, Aidan Lombard on keys/guitar (Lombard also contributes writing to the song “Stay Awake”), Will Graefe on guitar, and Craig Weinrib on drums. The lush recording, with its sly editing reminiscent of Teo Macero’s work (sharp cuts, quick transitions) offers listeners a peek behind the curtain of a live performance, one that feels brisk and carefully curated.

On this record, Wilkes debuts a dynamic set of new originals and arrangements, presenting a window into his syncretic approach to an ever-expanding contemporary songbook. Wilkes has a reputation for proffering a kind of “ambient jazz” that isn't groove-forward and doesn't foreground his chops as a bassist. Public Records Performance challenges that perception at every turn, showcasing Wilkes’ virtuosic bass playing and writing, featuring multiple bass solos and a propulsive in-the-pocket rhythm section. The ensemble's performance, while subtle, is in contrast to the obfuscation-through-restraint heard in much instrumental music today. This is a record of athletic precision. Perhaps Wilkes is the quarterback, but for him to succeed his teammates need to be in the right spots. Consider, for example, how Graefe's guitar and Wilkes' bass play the exact same line at the exact same time around 3:02 in "STAY AWAKE." There are no scores here, friends. This is jazzer ESP. Nothing else explains it.

Thematically, the performance is peppered with winks and nods to the fact that this is something of a homecoming for the Los Angeles-based musician. Opening track "I SAID YES" kicks things off confidently, with Wilkes and Weinrib’s drum-bass lock anchoring the melodic interplay between Lombard's colorful keys and Graefe's deft guitar work. The elegiac “RETURN HOME” carries a kind of middle-American wistfulness that renders this explicit. “JUST MARRIED” is the lone song where Wilkes sings (his vocals run through a Leslie like Jerry Garcia on "Rosemary") and Weinrib uses his trademark brushes. Its story of a sad sack watching a lost love get hitched echoes Wilkes' own feelings of longing and acceptance over a former hometown flame whom he thought might be at the show to hear it. (She wasn't.) The drumless "FEMME FATALE"—yes, that one—showcases the band's ability to take a familiar song and make it feel new through a sea of overlapping guitar trio and bass. Wilkes' gift, like many great improvisers, is his knack for choosing numbers that serve as a conduit for more than just his taste. Wilkes has a curator's mind and a crate-digger's heart, and these performances tap into a kind of collective memory.. How many young jazz phenoms would pair a Marty Robbins heartbreaker with an entry-level Velvet Underground cover? If any come to mind, consider how many of them can also make it feel so personal?

Unlike the cross-cultural textures of iiyo iiyo iiyo (2024) or the singer-songwriter lean of Driving (2023), Public Records Performance is Wilkes at his most natural: wry, heartfelt, cracking, a bit enigmatic, and, as always, b-e-a-utiful. Wlikes has always been about creating frameworks for spontaneity. And here, in typical Wilkesian fashion, things happen once and only once: improvised, slightly off-kilter, and totally unrepeatable. His presence is in the pacing, the edits, the way his bass anchors without over-explaining. The music moves with intention. It listens. It doesn’t make a case for itself. It plays. - Yousef Hilmy and J. Mamana