It's Time
I want to like this album. I know, that Roach is a good jazz musician, arranger, composer, etc. We Insist is brilliant. I think I understand and appreciate what he was trying to do here. But as hard as I tried, I just couldn't enjoy listening to this thing.
It has its moments - Mal Waldron can play piano, he is an under-appreciated jazz musician. Clifford Jordan has several moments of brilliiance, as does Richard Williams. Roach is much more reasonable than he is on Percussion Bitter Sweet, playing as though he does actually remember there is an ensemble which is made of talented musicians who need not be covered up by the maniacal drum-pounding of an angry, angry man.
But that damn choir. Listen, I am a firm believer (at least in its application to music) of Hunter S. Thompson's dictum, "It never got weird enough for me." I own 58 Sun Ra albums. That choir is weird and distracting like, well, all I've got here is that choir is as weird and distracting as a choir on a jazz album. That is pretty much what the allmusic.com reviewer said about it, too. You really do just want to see what the instrumentalists would have done without those vocalists.
A controversial statement for your consideration: Abbey Lincoln is not good. I will once again give you We Insist as a superior musical performance. I don't even want to write anything about her, to be honest. Her voice is grating and irritating in a way that makes me think of bitter, old-maid elementary school teachers who bemoan the disappearance of penmanship skills and Murder, She Wrote. I don't like her.
Overall, you are not missing anything if you don't have this album.
I do have to say that after 20 or so listenings of It's Time I am absolutely looking forward to the next album in the catalog - Jackie Paris' The Song is Paris. For two reasons - the first is that it is a mellow album, no hard-edged, politically-motivated vocals chapping my ears. The second is that this is one that I actually own on vinyl.
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