Stan Tracey Trio, Seventy Something
(Trio Records TR 563)

I don't know if the title constitutes an ironic wink in the direction of Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething, but I wouldn't be surprised. Deadpan humour is one of Stan Tracey's specialities and it carries over into his music. Recorded on tour last year, each of these eight pieces is a diverting story, well told. There are no Tracey compositions this time, but a selection of tasty standards, including one each by his two great influences, Monk and Ellington. Tracey possesses one of the truly inimitable piano styles: discursive, pugnacious, resourceful and endlessly entertaining. His crunchy chords always containing one fugitive and subversive note, and those chains of phrases, with one always heading in the wrong direction, grab you with their sheer audacity.