BRAD MEHLDAU: Ride into the Sun 

Released in August of last year, Brad Mehldau will be presenting this Grammy-nominated album live in concert on August 27 at the Balboa Theatre.

Hearing Brad Mehldau play Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake is like watching how Cézanne might use watercolors on canvas to reinterpret an Ansel Adams photograph. Mehldau’s sorcery is nothing short of supernatural. But it’s also incredibly humble. He brings colors to the fore with so much respect for the source material that he makes you believe they’d been there the entire time, just dormant, waiting to be unlocked. He’s the type of guy who applies just the right amount of elbow grease to open the most stubborn of pickle jars only to credit those who attempted before him with doing all the heavy lifting by loosening it up. The musical muses he so thoughtfully chooses (or, maybe better stated, choose him) do deserve a lot of credit; Mehldau can’t get blood from a stone, so to speak, and it doesn’t serve him to try. The trick is, he trusts his massive ears. He hears what’s there, of course but, most important, he hears what’s not quite there but could be; he hears the ghost notes and feels the unexpressed emotional contours of a piece of music…and then he re-animates them.

In the 1990s, the chemical company BASF had a TV ad that went something like this: “At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy; we make a lot of the products you buy better.” It’s kind of like that with Mehldau and Ride into the Sun, his tribute to the late indie/folk singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. But, then, also…this album presents four incredible Smith-inspired Mehldau originals. So, how you like them apples, BASF?!

Understanding Mehldau requires close listening, but he makes it easy; this music draws you in as comfortably and naturally as going home. The massively talented Chris Thile contributes voice and mandolin to two tracks, unforgettably so on “Colorbars,” where Thile presents the tone of Smith’s clever lyrics faithfully, nailing the addictive personality’s self-loathing side square and true.

“The White Lady Loves You More” is an Elliot Smith tune from his eponymously titled sophomore release (Kill Rock Stars, 1995). This is the one that first floored me, my on-ramp to discovering the rest of the album. Mehldau’s arrangement for chamber orchestra is sublime. Framed by rich, cascading strings and punctuated by bouncy and bright turns by the winds, particularly Agnes Marchione on clarinet, Mehldau’s pianistic explorations bring to life an entire musical universe that had been contained in Smith’s ideas all along. What a compositional team they would have made; what a team they make, nevertheless.

Other highlights include Mehldau’s arrangement of Smith’s “Sweet Adeline” and his original addendum/companion piece, “Sweet Adeline Fantasy.” Whether it’s Smith or Radiohead or Nick Drake, nobody living today adds instrumental virtuosity to pop melancholy quite like Mehldau. With others, like Christopher O’Riley, the whole classical treatment of the ’90s alternative/grunge universe can feel gimmicky. And that’s not even to throw shade at a guy like O’Riley. His work in that sphere is plenty enjoyable. But it’s different with Mehldau. Because it’s not that he necessarily plays this canon with superior virtuosity; it’s that you can feel, through the music, the depth of Mehldau’s personal relationship with Smith. I don’t know quite how he does it. The guy’s a magician. He consistently communicates what feels like real intimacy between himself and whomever his muse happens to be.

But to quote Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow: “You don’t have to take my word for it!”

The magic I’m talking about will be on full display late next month right here in San Diego. See and hear it for yourself. Brad Mehldau is worth the price of admission.