David Karsten Daniels & Fight The Big Bull - I Mean To Live Here Still

I have to confess, when I read “9-piece jazz ensemble” I was a little worried about my latest assignment. However, as David Karsten Daniels has been on the fabulous FatCat label since his solo debut in 2007, I was more than willing to give his collaboration with Fight The Big Bull on I Mean To Live Here Still the benefit of the doubt, particularly after discovering he had worked on Frightened Rabbit’s Christmas single a couple of years ago. So, would all of this turn out to be a sign of a glorious new timbre to titillate a previously ignorant new audience, or a bit of an indulgent mishmash of genres?

We open with the sound of a brass section warming up as the vocal gradually builds over the top, sounding a bit folky before getting a bit cacophonic as more sounds are added and the voices get a little more urgent and overlaid, building and building, then relaxing gently. We take our seats and prepare for the performance. ‘Funeral Bell’ follows and is just grand. I played this outside in the sun the other day, and it made people smile, which I think is a sound test for anything. There’s an acoustic guitar, some upbeat drumming, and a bit of brass from that jazz section, all weaving together whimsically, an early indication that this marriage might just work.

They then take a bit of a sidestep though, as more warming up is followed by some squiggly sax, which seems to be happening in a different room at a different time to the singing and sounds like a lot of fun to take part in, but perhaps not to listen to too many times; we do though. I feel a little harsh saying that, although it is true, as we are treated to some very considered, stripped back folk, and quite occasionally it sounds like The Shins acoustically pretending to be Fleet Foxes (when plugged in, the same impression would maybe equal Band of Horses), which works very well indeed.

Our only real issue is that the songs almost invariably break down into some freeform jazz, which admittedly occasionally sounds like you’ve wandered into Disney’s The Jungle Book (ace) but sometimes sounds like the crashing together of a lack of ideas. ‘Salmon Brook’ for instance sounds like it could be building into something spectacular, but then about a minute and a half in it irretrievably wanders off into a freestyle ether. As a pattern, this does get a little frustrating, and it is perhaps telling that the only songs to avoid this altogether are the shorter entries.

That’s not to say it can’t work of course. The album’s final track, ‘Epitaph On The World’, does it well, following each individual bit of mayhem with something even more interesting, ensuring that when it’s all over you are left wanting a little more, or at least dreaming of what could have been.

It may be missing the point, but I Mean To Live Here Still sounds like a whole heap of fantastic ideas, just tied together a little too tenuously. When it’s cohesive though, such as with ‘Smoke’, you get some clever lyrics melded to head-shakingly good noise. So I Mean To Live Here Still is perhaps not quite glorious or titillating, and possibly a bit indulgent, but certainly worth your time. Nice.