What strikes you immediately is the lengths Saft goes to to create a soundworld evoking McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane's work of the early 1960s. And in McHenry and Waits he has two collaborators perfectly happy to stand on the shoulders of giants. ‘Vessels’, for example, is introduced by Waits’ rolling toms (very Elvin Jones), before McHenry wails in with that Coltrane-like keening tone, until Saft takes the music on in great cascades and flourishes that Tyner would approve of. Maybe Saft sees his band as ‘vessels’ for the spirit of Coltrane's seminal quartet. But Blue Dream is no blatant copy or simple homage. Saft's songs are invested with a spirit of their own, at once summoning past gods, yet rich with Saft's own voice. In vivid contrast to the Coltrane feel (or rather it's Coltrane in ballad mode), Saft has chosen three decidedly old-school standards, their ‘simplicity’ (notably on ‘Violets for Your Furs’) setting off the urgent complexities of his own songs. Intriguing, challenging, Blue Dream is nothing less than the shock of the old.