By now readers should have become well-acquainted with Brad Mehldau’s radical departures from the art of contemporary acoustic piano trio jazz, the setting in which he made his name. This new release though might be his most far-out project to date. Yet it feels like a natural evolution as well as an amalgamation of two of his most exceptional recordings from the past decade: duo Mehliana’s synth-prog driven 2014 release Taming the Dragon and 2019’s Grammy award-winning Finding Gabriel. Jacob’s Ladder is the closest the pianist-composer has come to a full-on prog-inspired concept album: a texturally expansive, kaleidoscopic mishmash (on paper) of influences, use of symphonic-like and fugal form plus a giant bank of analogue synths, too long to list here, that rivals even that of Keith Emerson (an early childhood inspiration of Mehldau’s) in his heyday. Conceptually speaking, the album could be the 'Finding God' to his previous Finding Gabriel.

The central three-part suite starts with a reading of the titular passage of Jacob’s divine prophecy from Genesis by a spoken-word voice choir. Indeed as with Finding Gabriel the voice is again central: Luca van den Bossche’s opening soprano mantra on the mesmerising ‘Maybe as his Skies are Wide’ later emerges on a consciously middle-of-the-road version of Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ as sung by Nonesuch label mate Chris Thile. Elsewhere Tobias Bader’s antagonistic metal vocal is an update on Mehldau’s retro prog references, while Safia McKinney-Askeur/Becca Stevens’ wordless and folky Pentangle-ish vocals take their place in a witty and cohesive dialogue between instrumental and song. Nevertheless Mehldau’s signature as a pianist, even if it’s more Beatles, Bach and Brahms than Bud Powell, is all over the recording. On Jacob’s Ladder Mehldau gives you both something to think about as well as musically get your teeth into. Those are indeed rare qualities.