Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. My pals marveled at the preposterous size of Carl Palmer’s drum rig when we saw Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform at Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium in 1977. With the punk and reggae insurgencies on my radar, I wasn’t quite as gobsmacked as my peers. Even so, I willingly submitted to the bombastic spectacle.
As I’ve periodically recalled at this site, progressive rock bands like Rush and jazz fusion ensembles including Return to Forever were the music of choice among boys in my neighborhood in the mid-’70s. The free-thinking musician Brad Mehldau apparently heard a lot of the same stuff during his formative years. He gives my guilty pleasures a breathtaking makeover on his latest release.
Like all proper prog-rock recordings, Jacob's Ladder is a concept album with a somewhat muddled theme. I suspect the biblical allegory will become clearer with repeated listening, but for now I’m entranced by Mehldau’s ability to tickle my repressed auditory pleasure centers without making me feel like a cheap date. Jacob’s Ladder is guaranteed to blow your head apart.