And The Love Is Free

There is plenty of darkness on Sansone's first album in five years. From the title to the stark black-and-white graphics, the murky lyrical themes, and gritty, stripped-down, bass-free trio performance featuring Anders Osborne's distorted guitar, Sansone drags his gutsy blues-rock through the swamps around his New Orleans locale. It's as tough, raw, and powerful a collection as he has recorded. The three-member format also leaves plenty of room for his riveting harmonica, which he displays in both unplugged and electrified settings. Any sense of the upbeat, party atmosphere that dotted his earlier work is erased.

Lonnie Liston Smith entered the 1980s with Love Is the Answer, which is quite similar to previous Columbia efforts like Exotic Mysteries and Song for the Children. Jazz's hard-liners continued to call Smith a sellout; as they saw it, a musician who was talented enough to have been employed by the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Betty Carter, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk had no business becoming more commercial and catering to the quiet storm audience. But while Love Is the Answer isn't as challenging as Smith's work with Kirk and Sanders and isn't in a class with such Flying Dutchman gems as Astral Traveling and Expansions, it isn't a bad album either.