JOHN COLTRANE — Sun Ship (review)

JOHN COLTRANE — Sun Ship album cover Album · 1971 · Avant-Garde Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Sean Trane
From memory, Sun Ship is one of Trane’s first (and classic) quartet’s last albums, and it’s clear that one can see the changes ahead with the often-dissonant and difficult music. Opening on the very hard-line title track, where Trane takes it beyond the dissonance boundaries, but it remains accessible to to those open-mindedc enough to follow him in his search. The following Dearly Beloved is a much calmer (everything being relative at this point in Trane’s career), where Tyner’s haunting piano allows Trane to wander in the netherworld back and forth. An amazing track that sends chills down my spine. The side-closing Amen is a piano-dominated “tune” (a mater of speech, here) with Tyner exploding the keys of his piano, Trane is definitely ascending towards his own galaxy.

On the flipside, the 11-mins+ Attaining sees the quartet again reaching for distant sonic constellations, taking detours to check out a few asteroids, then slowing down to contemplate Saturn’s rings, before Elvin launches a drum salvo into the cosmos’ infinity. And of course, the album-closing Ascent can only hint at the future Ascension album. But with that track, it becomes clear why some elements of Trane’s first quartet are slowly dropping out of the picture, and Garrison’s very conventional bass solo is the evidence. Jimmy was always the quartet’s weaker fourth wheel, but the flat tire that closes the album is definitely tolling his personal knell, even if all three astronauts would have to leave the Sun Ship to board another Earthbound rocket, leaving Trane continuing his spiritual cosmic quest with other sidekicks. Not flawless, but SS might just be the transitional rocket between ALS and Ascension, and that alone makes it an essential Trane album.
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