Julian Lage, Scenes from Above Review

By Stamish Malcus

Julian Lage’s Blue Note period has steadily moved toward greater openness and trust: trust in melody, trust in space, and trust in the slow accumulation of ensemble texture. At first glance, Scenes from Above appears to continue the lineage of modern jazz guitar records that have defined much of Lage’s recent work. But the album keeps pulling away from modern-jazz polish toward something warmer and more grounded: steel-string resonance, hymn-like pacing, organ sustain, and looping guitar patterns that move with the patience of folk jazz rather than the forward pressure of bop.

The folk and Americana language shows up in the way the harmony cycles, the way phrases bend and hang, the way short repeating phrases return instead of racing toward harmonic resolution, and the way the quartet leaves air around the melody. Lage moves between acoustic and electric guitars without changing the album’s emotional center. On both instruments, he leans into bends,  moving chord shapes, and percussive chord movement that drawn from folk and country phrasing rather than bebop linearity. John Medeski’s organ and piano widen the harmony from underneath rather than crowding it, while Jorge Roeder and Kenny Wollesen keep the pulse active without forcing the music into constant momentum.

“Opal” opens the record an atmospheric prelude. Electronic ambience and hi-hat shimmer give way to Lage’s warm guitar melody, supported softly by Medeski’s organ. The tune stays low to the ground: hand percussion on the drum heads, organ chords tucked beneath the melody, and guitar voicings that unfold slowly instead of pushing toward release. The harmony never crowds the melody. Each ascending figure returns with slight variation, while the organ changes texture around the guitar without disturbing the track’s hushed pulse. There is no rush toward improvisation or climax. The piece establishes the album’s larger identity immediately through pacing, tone color, and spacious ensemble response.

Then “Red Elm” arrives with a medium-up swing feel and a little more motion. Roeder walks steadily while Wollesen keeps commenting around the ride cymbal pulse with loose snare and tom responses. Lage’s solo doesn’t build through long bebop lines so much as short angular ideas and quick chord punctuations underneath them. Even when Medeski moves into the same register, the two players somehow avoid stepping on each other’s sound. The tune eventually dissolves into electronics and sustained swells rather than snapping back into a clean melodic restatement, which feels completely natural by that point.

“Talking Drum” drops into one of the album’s deepest grooves. Medeski leans hard into the organ pocket while the rhythm section settles into a thick funk pulse that briefly slips into a lighter Latin feel before circling back again. Lage’s guitar work here is especially physical. You can hear him changing attack constantly—muting notes with the palm, shifting picking position for sharper bite, then softening the sound again as he moves through repeated descending chord movement. The solo develops through repetition and articulation more than speed. Even the transition figures feel important structurally. Joe Henry’s production helps a lot here too: the drums spread naturally across the stereo image, organ slightly left, guitar slightly right, bass sitting full in the center.

“Havens” might be the clearest statement of the album’s roots-oriented identity. The steel-string acoustic guitar has a dry, percussive sound that pushes against Wollesen’s restless sixteenth-note motion underneath. Instead of moving through busy harmonic changes, the tune keeps turning through repeating cycles, letting texture and pulse generate the momentum. Medeski mostly sustains broad organ tones underneath the guitar articulation, which creates this really appealing contrast between movement and suspension. Lage fills the tune with slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and short cycling chord patterns that feel drawn from acoustic folk and country guitar language without ever turning self-consciously traditional. The dynamics build gradually, then quietly settle back down.

“Night Shade” slows everything back into a ballad feel built around brushes, half-time bass motion, and bright electric guitar tone. Lage’s bends matter here. He lets notes pull slightly sharp before relaxing back into the harmony, which gives the melody a vocal quality against Medeski’s long held chords. As the tune develops, the drums lean into a firmer backbeat and the organ brightens underneath the melodic lines, bringing in a subtle gospel feeling without overplaying it. The quartet never forces the climax. It just slowly grows there.

“Solid Air” barely settles at all. Cymbal rolls drift underneath rubato guitar and organ figures, and just when the time seems ready to lock in, the quartet loosens it again. The chorale-like harmony and slow pacing give the piece a hymnal quality, but the track never feels static because the ensemble keeps breathing around the pulse instead of sitting directly on it. The final chord just hangs there for a few seconds after the motion disappears.

“Ocala” continues the acoustic side of the album with some of Lage’s most direct country-inflected phrasing. The groove stays relaxed throughout, built around a medium sixteenth-note pulse and loose half-time bass movement underneath. Lage mixes chordal bends, repeated melodic fragments, and little tonal shifts that occasionally hint at Chet Atkins or even bits of gypsy jazz phrasing. Medeski answers with short melodic ideas instead of dense harmonic commentary, and nobody in the band seems interested in overpowering the tune. The track never really strains for climax. It just keeps circling comfortably inside its own feel.

“Storyville” is harder to pin down, but that’s part of what makes it work. Acoustic guitar figures emerge from cymbal washes and open space while hints of groove appear and disappear before they fully settle. The track feels suspended between motion and atmosphere for most of its running time. At certain moments the ensemble almost sounds ready to lock into a pulse, then backs away from it again.

The closing “Something More” expands the ensemble palette with piano and a stronger rock-oriented rhythmic push. The chord movement opens considerably here, giving the band room to lean harder into pulse and dynamics. Wollesen locks into a driving rock groove while Lage shifts toward a sharper electric tone filled with bends, slides, and sustained notes. Ascending ensemble figures build momentum before a metric modulation briefly unsettles the feel. The guitar solo grows directly from the melody, and the piano continues the same energy rather than resetting it. By the final return to the head, the quartet has fully merged the album’s folk, gospel, jazz, and rock elements into one shared language, arriving at the record’s fullest release without abandoning its patience or sense of space.

What makes Scenes from Above compelling is how naturally these influences operate inside the music itself. The album rarely crowds its own ideas. Themes unfold slowly, grooves breathe, and even the climactic moments arrive through gradual layering rather than sudden eruption. Acoustic resonance, suspended harmony, organ sustain, and roots-oriented phrasing shape not only the album’s atmosphere, but the way the quartet builds tension, releases energy, and defines motion from track to track.

Scenes from Above does not dilute contemporary jazz language. It expands contemporary jazz by letting acoustic resonance, suspended harmony, and roots-oriented phrasing reshape how the music embraces Americana and folk traditions.