Julian Lage Quartet, Scenes from Above Review

Julian Lage’s Scenes from Above: Shaped in Real Time

by Ferell Aubre

Julian Lage’s Scenes from Above arrives with the expectations that follow his Blue Note work: refined guitar language, clear writing, and a strong bandleader voice. What also comes through strongly is the quartet’s chemistry and interaction. The album moves by shared listening as guitar, organ, bass, and drums adjust to build each performance. Together the ensemble shapes the program through constant adjustment of touch, response, and listening.

“Opal” sets that tone, functioning as a prelude to the coming music. Lage’s warm jazz-box melody is doubled by John Medeski’s organ in close unison, the organ also placing soft chords underneath. The two instruments sit in the same register without drifting out of tune or masking each other. Lage’s guitar voicings aligning closely with the organ’s sustained tones, which is a theme throughout. Kenny Wollesen keeps the dynamic low, working hi-hat and hand-played drum surfaces in a straight-eighth pulse, while Jorge Roeder stays inside the texture. The track holds to its melodic frame, returning to ambience at the close rather than opening into improvisation.

That shared movement becomes clearer on “Red Elm.” Roeder walks, Wollesen rides and answers phrases with snare and tom figures, and Lage’s electric tone carries just enough sustain to sustain lines without losing clarity. His solo builds through short, angular phrases, often followed by chordal replies. The shift to Medeski happens inside the same rhythmic ideas Medeski extends the lines already in motion, spacing them out and reshaping their contour. Lage moves into accompaniment, placing chords between phrases or pulling back entirely. Wollesen adjusts the ride pattern and adds snare commentary in response to the organ’s pacing, while Roeder subtly leans the time forward or relaxes it. The band releases the energy into a held swell rather than returning to the head.

“Talking Drum” locks into an organ funk-oriented groove, but the feel keeps shifting from within. Wollesen holds the pocket while interrupting it with snare accents and short ensemble hits that accent the groove forward. Medeski’s solo grows gradually, his tone opening with more rotary movement, his ideas flow with melody and groove. Lage works around the fretboard with single notes and chords in his solo. His right-hand adding palm-muted figures and small changes in picking position that brighten or soften the attack. Transitions are marked by descending chordal figures and coordinated hits, bringing the band back to the head without breaking the flow.

On “Night Shade,” the quartet lowers the dynamic. Lage’s bright electric tone and clear pick attack sit against sustained organ chords, brushes, and Roeder’s half-time bass motion. The melody leaves space for bends and held tones, and the band leaves room around those gestures. Medeski’s solo unfolds in long lines with inner voice movement. In his solo, Lage places chords and melodic phrases with Wollesen keeping the texture light. As the drums shift toward a firmer backbeat and the organ brightens, the ensemble builds density together around a repeated figure from Lage. After the ensemble builds the climax together, they return to the calmer energy for the ending.

On “Havens,” Lage switches to acoustic steel-string, and the change is immediate in the attack. The lines become more percussive as slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs sit directly inside Wollesen’s active 16th-note pattern. Medeski holds sustained chords underneath, creating a contrast between motion and stillness, while Roeder anchors the center. As Lage’s solo develops, Lage leans into repeated rhythmic figures and two-octave arpeggios that lock into the drum pattern, and the band builds with him before easing back into a lighter texture.

“Solid Air” depends on the same collective timing. A swirling guitar-and-organ figure opens in rubato, cymbal rolls gather underneath, and the melody gradually settles into pulse. The piece moves between time and suspension, with chorale-like voicings and country-tinged phrasing shaping the line. The quartet’s control is in the breathing nature of the phrases in how long they stay out of time, when they let the pulse settle in, and how they arrive together on the final sustained chord.

By “Something More,” the sound widens. Piano enters, the rhythm section leans into a folk-gospel rock pattern, and Lage’s guitar takes on more edge with slides and bends. The ascending ensemble figures lift the track through coordinated hits and rising dynamics, while the groove remains open enough to shift underneath. The metric modulation unfolds from within the group, and the handoff between guitar and piano solos happens without a break in momentum. Each player adjusts role and density as the section changes, keeping the ensemble balanced.

Across Scenes from Above, Lage sets ideas in motion, but the quartet determines where they go. Medeski shifts between sustained color, counterline, and lead voice; Roeder adjusts the weight and direction of the time; Wollesen shapes phrasing through touch and placement. Phrases stay open, roles move, and the weight of the music passes between players to communicate with each other and the listener. By the end, the quartet’s sound is easy to hear as one shaped in chemistry, by touch, pulse, and space.