The Hands Free: The Hands Free
New Amsterdam Recordings

Friends for many years, the four members of The Hands Free derive the greatest pleasure from performing together in late-night folk jams. Such camaraderie comes through vividly on the quartet's self-titled debut album, and one comes away from the release charmed by the rapport James Moore (guitar, banjo), Caroline Shaw (violin), Nathan Koci (accordion), and Eleonore Oppenheim (bass) have clearly developed. That strong conversational dimension is brought into even sharper relief by other details: the album material was recorded live to analog tape, a move that accentuates the spontaneous feel of a typical Hands Free performance; improvisation finds its way into every performance, such that no two are ever the same; and the group prefers to play unamplified and in the round, which also maximizes interactivity.

Each member brings something unique to the group: a singer as well as violinist, Shaw is well-known as a Roomful of Teeth member and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer; Oppenheim's an adventurous bassist who performs in other groups, among them Glasser and Victoire; Koci's established a reputation for playing in chamber, folk, and musical theater contexts; and Moore plays in the electric guitar quartet Dither when not collaborating with someone like John Zorn. The group name, incidentally, originated from a collaboration between Paul Éluard and Man Ray that grew into the 1937 book Les Mains Libres (in English, Hands Free), a name that appealed to the group for its focus on imaginative free play. Captivated by the book's poetry and line drawings, Moore enlisted Shaw, Oppenheim, and Koci to join him in transposing its content into musical form, the album the result. With such diverse backgrounds in play, Hands Free's material naturally crosses genres, with folk, classical, tango, jazz, and free improv some of those that surface within the eight-song set.

That interactive, free-play dimension's always present, whether it be a spiky blues-country romp like “Yes or No,” which plays like some bastardized spawn of Ornette Coleman and Flatt & Scruggs, or something more quietly meditative in nature such as “Needle & Thread.” Still, as much as improv's part of the group's MO, notated passages are present, too. Moments arise where two members play unison lines, and solos alternate in such a way that pre-planning clearly was involved.

Moore's banjo picking gives “Lost Halo” old-school flavour, though the dark, vaguely dissonant utterances by the paired violin-and-accordion lend the material a neo-classical twist as well. A boisterous Koci leads the others through the spirited hijinks of “Sade”; “Lirr Bleau,” on the other hand, finds the accordionist conjuring images of a romantic evening at a Vienna cafe, his shimmering chords augmented by inspired extemporizing from Oppenheim and Shaw. This is the kind of group where a typical track might see the lead change hands between all four players.

July 2018