Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - Happy Today (album-length concert film)
Since we talked about SML yesterday, let's talk about that other band that saxophonist Josh Johnson and bassist Anna Butterss play in — the unbelievable ETA IVtet, led by guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Parker and rounded out beautifully by drummer Jay Bellerose. Ever since that first recording appeared on Eremite Records a few years back, I've been captivated by the IVtet's radical grooves; the latest release, Happy Today, only deepens the spell.
And you can watch how Happy Today all went down via a perfectly shot/edited film from Charlie Weinmann, captured at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles last summer. It's great to see the band as well as hear them, as they build up the songs in real time, following the melodies and rhythms into ecstatic territory.
Earlier this year, I spent what felt like weeks walking around listening to a promo of Happy Today, and the word that kept coming to mind was "utopian." Maybe this multigenerational / multiracial / nonbinary improv jazz group could ... save the world? Or maybe that's too much to put on four musicians, haha. But something about the communicative and communal elements of this music gives me a hopeful feeling, that rarest of commodities these days.
And that feeling isn't only generated by the band. It comes from the audience as well. In a lot of live recordings, crowd noise is a distraction at best, annoying at worst. Here, whenever you hear a little whoop of offstage joy, it reminds you of the now-ness of moment, the reality of the room. It tells you that this shit is happening.
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet — The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem/Nonesuch)
The Way Out Of Easy is the second album by Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet. The combo, which comprises Parker on guitar and electronics, Anna Butterss on double bass, Josh Johnson on alto sax and electronics, and Jay Bellerose on drums, took its name from ETA, the Highland Park, Los Angeles oyster bar where it held down a periodic gig on Monday nights devoted to open-ended sets that were both unscripted and unified in intent. Like its predecessor, Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy (Eremite), it’s a double LP that captures the band stretching out and seeing where the vibe takes them.
The fact that the IVtet was able to sustain such a run says something about what making music this way means to its members. Not only does it take commitment to reconcile calendars beholden to the touring schedules of Tortoise, Robert Plant and Makaya McCraven, among others. It’s absurdly difficult even for players working at that level to get a regular gig in LA. It’s an industry town, and anyplace that capital concentrates, it’s liable to hog art’s oxygen. ETA, which had neither a stage nor a PA, was one of the very few places in LA where one could go to hear bands make music in real time, and when it closed at the end of 2023, the city’s heads mourned.
One ETA regular was a lapsed studio engineer named Bryce Gonzales. Burned out on the computer-bound processes of modern recording, he had dropped studio work in favor of hand-building compressors and preamps. When he heard Parker and crew at ETA, he found himself lured back into recording by the challenge of capturing a live band in a very particular and unforgiving setting. Gonzales’ liner notes for The Way Out Of Easy go into detail about the mixer that he built specifically for this job, which he has now performed twice for the IVtet, but you don’t need to know anything about signal paths to grasp what he ultimately learned from the journey; that in order to capture the band’s essence, you have to keep out of the way of their real-time rapport. Producers tend to be dubbed honorary bandmembers when it is obvious how they’ve shaped a record’s sound; Gonzales earns said honor by making sure by leaving no trace of his fingerprints.
Played back-to-back, the new album doesn’t sound drastically different from Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy. Once more, Parker’s unfussy and adroit guitar playing suspends lyric phrases within a matrix bound by Butterss’s supple lines, the peanut butter and jelly tonal compound of Johnson’s combination of sax and signal processers, and Bellerose’s endlessly inventive rhythmic variations. But the feel is different, not in kind but in quality. The quartet’s already natural grooves and spaces feel more like the product of a single organism, breathing and flexing in response to collective effort. Each reed + circuit smear, each contrapuntal bass figure, chain of plucked phrases that don’t change until they do, and each shift of percussive emphasis adjusts the music as inevitably as a rock thrown into one end of a pond ruins the sleep of the frogs on the other side. Parker gets plenty of cred for the production acumen he has exercised with Tortoise and the New Breed; his work with the ETA IVtet affirms his mastery of making music that feels and is felt in real time.
Still not sure if Anna Butterss or Mary Halvorson wins the award for most brain melting jazz guitar of 2024.
Jlin also a competitor in at least one of these categories (as it turns out I like her work better when it veers away from strict footwork and more towards jazz), as is Arooj Aftab.
SML-XL - Big Ears, The Old Greyhound Station, Knoxville, Tennessee, March 28, 2026
As I think I've mentioned, Aquarium Drunkard is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year. If there's a music/culture website that deserves to legally buy a drink, it's AD. At this late date, it's hard to remember what the internet landscape was really like back in 2005 when founder Justin Gage first hit "post" — those were different times! But while most other similarly styled online destinations have either crashed and burned or become totally unrecognizable, Aquarium Drunkard has somehow managed to stay afloat on ever-stormy seas.
And personally speaking, I'm grateful! I started contributing to AD back in 2012 and through it all, the site has given me a necessary outlet, a positive space, a groovy internet playground. The secret to the site's longevity might just be that it's stayed the course, never veering off into a wider cultural morass, never aiming for an audience beyond curious, adventurous listeners and readers. Which is not to say that AD hasn't grown and matured; "only the good shit" doesn't mean "only the shit we already know." Our increasingly far-flung contributors ensure that there's always room for fresh voices. I don't think a week goes by that I don't discover something new and awesome on AD.
And speaking of new and awesome — helping Aquarium Drunkard celebrate 21 years this weekend is SML, the astonishing improv electro-jazz ensemble that has been on a serious roll over the past few years. I can't think of a better band for the occasion; I caught a few sets during their Big Ears residency this past spring and the word "magical" might be the only word that applies. Those shows took place in Knoxville's abandoned Greyhound Station, a spot where lonely ghosts still lingered. SML transformed that vibe into something joyous, inclusive and intuitive.
Here's what you need to do: Check out Richard Hayes' excellent tape of one of those Big Ears sets, as the expanded SML (featuring Jeff Parker and Mikel Patrick Avery) take things into the stratosphere. And then check out the group's new live LP. Then read Scott Bunn's wide-ranging SML interview. And then make plans to be at the Teragram this weekend with Aquarium Drunkard.
Josh Johnson: I think all of us have a desire to not get too comfortable. We’re all interested in exploring different arcs and different ways of getting through a set because I think it’s easy to find something that feels good and works, and then just repeat it. That can be amazing. And there are a lot of people who do that, and that’s incredible. But doing that too much makes us uncomfortable. There’s a discomfort in like, “Are we just playing that out?” It’s the best form of sabotage [laughs]. I feel like we’re all trying to blow up the plan a little bit, knowing that that’s where the best stuff is. Somebody’s going to do something that’s unexpected, and you have to respond to it. What does that make you do? What choice do you make?
