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STATIC
BEARTONES
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Björn Wennås has the chops you’d expect of someone who emigrated from Sweden to study at Berklee with guitar gurus Mick Goodrick and Jon Damian. But the emphasis on his second CD is composition and ensemble interplay. The lead-off track, "Song 2," begins with bassist Bruno Råberg belting out a phlegmy ostinato with his bow; he’s soon joined by drummer Ziv Ravitz’s funky backbeat and a zig-zagging boppish unison line voiced by Wennås, trumpeter Phil Grenadier, and singer Carmen Marsico. On the title track, a wandering melody unwinds over a ballad tempo, with Wennås and Grenadier trading background and foreground lines, giving way for a Råberg solo, and then fading on Wennås’s soft-voiced chords. Wennås can also play a slow solo and sustain it, as he does on "L’uomo e la montagna," a sextet number with Michael Reis on piano. Marsico’s vocals don’t even enter until a good six minutes into the eight-and-a-half-minute piece, turning it into a bossa. Wennås’s arrangements are never predictable, and that includes the familiar "Ruby My Dear" (a duo for voice and guitar) and "Lonnie’s Lament." The trio "Nardis" even gets a good walking-four groove going with some dirty rock-guitar tone. Björn Wennås | Zeitgeist Gallery, 1353 Cambridge St, Inman Square, Cambridge | July 24 | 7 p.m. | 617.877.6060
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