GRACE UNDER PRESSURE

No, this isn't John Scofield's tribute to Rush. It's actually a pleasant but unassuming jazz album. And despite the electric guitars of Scofield and Bill Frisell, the album is much closer to be-bop than fusion.

As I mentioned above, the songs, all written by Scofield, are mostly be-bop styled. With Charlie Haden on bass (acoustic mostly) and Joey Baron on drums, the music stays fairly light, with only Scofield's adventurous soloing around the chords taking the music to another level. The arrangements never get heavy, in fact they remain at the dinner music level for most of the album.

The only songs that venture far enough away from be-bop enough to be tagged fusion are Twang, a bluesy number with an almost country feel, and Pat Me, where Scofield's tone sounds so much like Pat Metheny's that the title must be a pun.

This isn't a bad album, but it doesn't really stand out either.