Nothing if not prolific and following quickly on from last year’s superlative solo Live In Marciac set Brad Mehldau returns in March with his latest album Ode, his label Nonesuch has confirmed.

A trio studio album, the first since Day is Done, when drummer Jeff Ballard first joined Mehldau and bassist Larry Grenadier for their initial outing on record released seven years ago, Ode features none of Mehldau’s trademark alt. rock covers but instead concentrates on the pianist’s original compositions.

The album is a portrait of real and fictional characters, ‘odes’ to their personalities seen through Mehldau’s distinctive compositional lens. Eleven tracks in all, the album recorded in 2008 and 2011 opens with ‘M.B’, for Michael Brecker, whose final album Pilgrimage Mehldau appeared on, and continues with the elegiac title track following built on quietly enveloping tremolos.

‘26’ takes the energy levels up a notch followed by ‘Dream Sketch’ which has a real stamp of quality about it, punctuated as it is by tersely dissonant “wrong notes” punched out intuitively as the tension is ratcheted upwards. ‘Bee Blues’ is the bebop-type interlude Mehldau fans will be familiar with at concerts, the kind of inconsequential loosener that makes what comes afterwards that more vital.

‘Twiggy’ draws to mind Highway Rider in its narrative urgency with Ballard coming to the fore on leathery percussion while ‘Kurt Vibe’ gives Grenadier the chance to establish the mood, and Mehldau sounds as if he’s in mid-thought rather than halfway into a habitually intense piece of soul-searching. Oh, in case you were wondering, the Kurt is as in guitar supremo Rosenwinkel not his grungeness, Kurt Cobain.

‘Stan The Man’ opens with a Leonard Bernstein-type set up, before launching into furious bebop, while the heart of the album can possibly be found on the ‘outlaw’ homage to Easy Rider’s George Hanson on ‘Wyatt’s Eulogy for George Hanson.’

‘Aquaman’ and the nine minute-long ‘Days of Dilbert Delaney’ complete the album, which as a whole firmly shifts our focus back on to Mehldau the composer, and the potency of his formidable trio.

– Stephen Graham

Follow @Jazzwise