There's not much needs to be said about this album really. It's a perfectly catchy and listenable piece of accessable jazz that, although being grounbreaking in one respect, is still very much of it's time.

The main theme (or gimick if you're feeling less generous) of this album is that nearly every part of it is played in time signiatures that are irregular, or rather, more relevantly, unknown to jazz music of the time (hence the name "Time Out"). The great achievement of this album is that Brubeck succeeded not only in creating coherent music out of a musical style that at the time was considered to be inaccesible and innapropriate for jazz, but that he used these apparently inaccesible time signiatures to make music that was incredibly catchy, didnt seem at all unnatural and enjoyed huge commercial success.

There are some really ludicrously catchy parts of this album, namely the melodic section of Take Five and the head for Blue Rondo Alla turk, thanks to Brubecks very competent handling of supposedly inflammatory musical forms. Indeed, many of the most exciting moments during this album come purely from observing the time signiature changes (with which the sleve notes are very helpful) and counting on your fingers, desperately trying to follow. I never thought i would find a fast tempo 3/4 turning almost imperceptibly into a slow 4/4 ( or 12/8 as the 3/4 turns into triplets in one beat of the slow 4/4) to be so exciting.

Generally what you find on this album is an overall very competent set of musicians playing around with strange time signiatures and soloing adequately. The only acception to this is paul desmond who is sure to wow you into submission with his beautiful, haunting, sweet-singing sax tone. He has good control of phrasing (as you need to on an album of such tricky time changes) and his motivic development too feels rather accomplished and always very natural, but really its the tone he manages to achieve that is the most striking thing about his playing and on the entire album, as you may have already noticed if you are already familiar with the spectacularly sensitive sax part on the famous Take Five track. His beautiful tone and rather subtle playing are most apparent against the rest of the band on the second track, strange meadow lark. The piece starts with an extended intro by Dave Brubeck playing solo and is followed by Desmond on sax, playing the same melody that Brubeck played in the intro. Hearing the same melody played by the 2 different players just makes Desmonds beautiful playing stand out so much and really does wonders for that melody line.

One aspect of the album where Brubeck seems to fall short is in the endings. Going on the tracks from this album alone it would seem that Dave Brubeck does not know how to end pieces of music. Every track seems to either end with one of those cliched jazz descending arpeggios that feels somewhat like its been jammed in too early or just slowly fizzles out in the style that the piece started in. Generally this leaves most of the tracks with a feeling of anticlimax.

Another issue i have with this album is that it, to me, exemplifies one of the worst things about cool jazz, that it is litterally cool in every way to the point of being rather emotionally unenvolved. A masterful jazz musician like Bill Evans can play cool jazz but still throw his heart and soul into it and thus create some really spellbinding music. Aside from the odd moments of stellar beauty that come from Paul Desmond this album really has no real emotional content. It's ok but theres not really anything to make you fall in love with the music. In short, it's parlour music.

Conclusion:

I liked this album. As i said, there are some totally beautiful bits, thanks mainly to Paul Desmond, and there are some criminally catchy moments that do really make you (if only for a few seconds) stop everything you're doing and play some air saxophone, but really theres nothing particularly magical about this album.

This is not really the work of any kind of musical mastermind. The experiments into time signiatures were a bold move and really paid off and Dave Brubeck shall always be remembered for it but what he does with the compositions themselves is rather unadventurous and somewhat underwhelming. Overall, a fairly well made and fairly enjoyable album.

After finishing his second album, the acclaimed and in my opinion wholly overrated Goodbye and hello, Tim Buckley went into a hiatus period to redefine and expand his musical style and to work on his singing. After 2 years of experimentation and introducing jazz elements into his music, buckley eventually came out with happy sad.

Let me start by saying that this is my faveourite and probably the best album of the 60s. I just love it's feeling of total freedom, and absolute clarity aswell. I can think of no other album that is as completely immersive and intense and experimental and yet as completely laid back as this one is.

I'll start by looking at the music. Now Tim buckley is no great musician. Though he is an excellent singer and a very versatile songwriter all he basically does is sing and strum his guitar, and no more. Really the strength of the music in all his albums comes from partly his willingness to experiment and take his music in any direction but mainly comes from the excellent band of musicians he has assembled around him, in particular Lee Underwood who is effectively the musical director of the band.

Lee Underwood on this album plays the part of lead guitar and he does it astoundingly well. The overall tone of this album is very soft and warm and generally quite mellow, Lee Underwoods warm almost muffled Jazz guitar being a part of this. His playing never oversteps the mark, never shows off, never tries to outdo the rest of the band in anyway but seems only to complement it. Much of his work on this album is practically un-noticeable, the way he plays melodic chordal accompaniment that really sound quite complicated when you play attention to it but basically just hide underneath the overall texture of the music, giving it depth and new levels of subtlety. For, that's what his playing is, subtle, all the way through the album. Even when he has a solo like in the beautiful "love from room 109 at the islander" he keeps it all very melodic and catchy and plays with great tenderness seemingly turning a mere scalic run into a great expressive swell that seems to flow and drift like the sea we hear in the background of the piece.

I think the overall sound that has been achieved on this album is a great success and quite surprising when you think that it has all been achieved almost entirely with acoustic instruments and absolutley no effects. For when you think of acoustic bands you tend to think of very spare, rather staccato sort of sounds, the twanging of strings the plinking of pianos etc. Not so with this album. Tim buckleys stretchy, drifting voice, and buzzy 12-string, Underwoods soft filling in guitar work, the double bass that you dont even realise is there and the resonating tones of the vibraphone all come together on almost every track to make a completely rich full sound that almost tastes of ripeness. Much of the music also sounds very experimental, almost avant garde when you compare it with the 3-chord strumming other folk songwriters were using at this time. This is part of the reason why i believe it is virtually impossible to date this album. The music has aged very well as a result of this. No one sound on this album sounds at all like it can be pinned down to any period of music. The only thing that gives it away slightly is tim buckley's voice which at this point is clearly heavily influenced by elvis, but his main vocal influence seems to be the old black music (jazz, gospel, blues) singers, which saves his voice from sounding naff or dated.

Really, especially when you compare this album with his last (goodbye and hello), all the music you hear on this album is a tremendous step forward and a huge achievement for any folk or even jazz musician.

I also need to give much credit in particular to tim buckley's voice which has improved hugely since his last album. Indeed, tim buckley is the only songwriter i can think of in which every single album he released displayed a monumental step forward in his singing ability which is apparent even to the most undiscerning ears. This is the first album where he really sounds like he is comfortable with his voice and can just jam along with his band, singing notes that can reach as high and sustain for as long as he likes. At one or two points in the record you notice that his voice falters slightly, has the slightest of imperfections (imperfections which he has surpassed by the time he released his next album) but these are only really noticeable to people who are listening for it.

There is virtually no production on the whole album and as far as i can tell, no overdubbing. The way the whole group plays each track all together as something of a controlled jam shows how the band has been influenced greatly by jazz and gives the performances a kind of laid back swing which complements the overall feel of the album incalculably.

I think i've said all i need to about the musical side of the album and there isnt much else to say. Frankly Tim Buckley isnt the most lyrical of songwriters. Although he can write with immense feeling and warmth about situations that stem from his own life (after all Happy Sad, like blood on the tracks, is one of the great break-up albums) he's no Bob Dylan.

This album really was the milestone in his career, the turning point. In his first two albums (happy sad is his third) he was working on becoming one of the great songwriters and even wrote an obligatory protest song for his second album. On the albums that follow happy sad he loosens up greatly as a songwriter and goes for the more musical approach, his lyrics barely making songs at all but merely being the text that he can use his to fit into the formless jams that much of his following music occupies. Basically before happy sad he was a songwriter and afterwards he was a musician and a singer. Happy sad is Tim Buckley standing at the crossroads. This is partly why happy sad is Tim Buckley's best album. He is still writing songs (for the relative meaninglessness of his later work can be frustrating) but he has also lost the songwriter based rigidity of style and has become a fluid, laid back experimental musician.

He is neither a very articulate or particularly poetic lyricist, but his writing simply and effectively carries the feeling of the song with the most economic use of language. You could see this as a shortcoming for Tim Buckley as a songwriter but expecting his lyrics to be more articulate is like expecting the record to be more produced. Tim Buckley's lyrics work because they are a simple expression of what needs to be expressed and can be understood directly, without any need for interpretation.

Conclusion.

Recently i felt the urge to listen to this album again, so i did. Later that day i wanted to jam along with just the first track for a bit, maybe learn some of the guitar parts and when the first track finished i found i was completely unable to stop listening. I was completely and utterly spellbound and without having intended to i ended up listening to the whole album without moving from my seat and without touching the skip button. Im sure this has happened to me often before with this album. I know that every time any track off of happy sad plays on my mp3 player playlist i have to stop what i'm doing and listen to the track through to the end. This album is just so completely riveting and utterly compelling that every time i hear it i seem to loose all my own will power and have to listen to all of it. As far as i know this is the only album that i have ever listened to all the way through, twice in one day. For how totally spellbinding this album is i cannot possibly see how i could rate it as anything other than a 5.
Its true that, as i said, the whole sound and musical aspect and everything about the performances on this album is a huge achievement and sounds very proffessional, much more so than i've come to expect from folk musicians. As far as I know, no other album sounds like this.
the weaknesses are 1. tim buckleys slightly faltering but still amazing voice, although this is only an issue because his now excellent singing is not yet as completely astonishing as it came to be on his later albums and 2. His lyric writing. Come to think of it, these arent really weaknesses at all, but simply the few areas of the album that are anything less than absolutely exceptional. For the overall excellence of this album in practically every area i give it 5 stars, almost a masterpiece.