Binker Golding group channels gospel and country at the Purcell Room

“Some of you may be thinking ‘what the hell’s going on?’” says Binker Golding, two songs into his opening night show at the 2022 EFG London Jazz Festival.

He had good reason to wonder. The saxophonist – perhaps best known for his freewheeling, frenetic improv as a member of the duo Binker and Moses – spent a good proportion of the night channelling something else entirely: a softer, sweeter side; the Americana-tinged gospel, country and blues sounds explored in his latest album, Dream Like A Dogwood Wild Boy.

The night starts with a stripped back, unplugged feel. As pianist Sarah Tandy and drummer Sam Jones wait in the wings, the band is bolstered by the guest talents of violinist and vocalist Alice Zawadski and harmonica player Philip Achille. On covers of tunes like Carole King’s Way Over Yonder and the Smashing Pumpkins’ To Sheila, Zawadski’s clear voice and controlled vibrato perfectly carries the emotional weight of the lyrics. Achille’s blues harp blends beautifully with Golding’s tenor sax, while also stealing the spotlight at times with soloing that defied this reviewer’s preconceptions of the instrument’s ceiling.

The group skids into a faster-paced bluegrass stomp, double bassist Daniel Cassimir setting the pace and thumping away. But the overall tone of the night so far is mainly mellow, sentimental without being saccharine. As guitarist Billy Adamson strums his steel string and Zawadski’s vocals ring out, London’s Purcell Room crowd is briefly transported onto the deck of a slow moving Mississippi steamboat, serenaded into the misty night.

The dynamic changes as Tandy and Jones emerge, with the rollicking opening groove of (Take Me To The) Wide Open Lows getting the players on their feet and firing on all cylinders. This, the album’s opening tune, showcases Golding’s flair for catchy melodies, an expansive hook that sounds like adventure and optimism. In later solo sections, he floats above the chord changes, his playing alternating between melody-led sentiment and all-out deranged pyrotechnics.

Tandy’s soloing is exhilarating, her fingers flying around the keys and tapping a seemingly never-ending wellspring of harmonic ideas. Adamson produces a gorgeous tone from the Telecaster that replaces his acoustic and takes us into blues rock territory, complete with Delta Blues slide parts. It all makes for a fully absorbing experience. The final tune before the encore, All Out Of Fairy Tales, is an emotional, credits-rolling type of tune, a fittingly bittersweet finale for a night that ends, as Golding admits, “just as they were getting warmed up.”