Bassist Todd Sickafoose released his first album Dogs Outside in 2000 and got excellent press for the genre-blending Tiny Resistors eight years later. Since then, he has concentrated on composing, production, studio sessions and sideman gigs. He’s won a Tony for orchestration, a Grammy for co-production and performed with a host of left-field heavyweights – the likes of Ron Miles, Myra Melford and Don Byron capture his stylistic bent. He released the soundtrack to the motion picture The Island in Me earlier this year, and Time to 1.5, the soundtrack of Threshold Season 4, the year before.

This new album Bear Proof has been on the shelf for a number of years – no recording date is given, but the album was recorded in a single take at Berkley’s Fantasy Studios, which closed in 2018. Not surprisingly, given his experience, Sickafoose’s return to jazz oozes left-field class.

The album, themed on boom and bust, seamlessly conjoins nine dynamic, packed-with detail compositions into a continuous work. Production is crystal-clear, emotions cinematic and the ultra-precise playing grips.

The set opens with the gentle moods and subtle voicings of ‘The Gold Gate’ brought to life by sparse guitar twangs and a scattering of pinched trumpet notes. The restless ‘Bent into Shape’ is angular, ‘Switched On’ grooves powerfully and ‘Flush’ has a triumphant, cinematic feel.

As the album continues, emotions run high on ‘Boom, Bust, Startup, Ruin’ and gain a rosier glow on ‘Turns Luck’. But each track combines multiple moods and is packed with orchestrated drama and focussed solo breaks. Americana is at the album’s core, delivered grippingly by a top-notch studio-assembled band, and gaining unexpected shapes through Sickafoose’s expertly drawn score right through to ‘Reverse Fortune’, the album’s final track.