The role that Donny McCaslin's quartet played on David Bowie's swansong Blackstar in late 2015/early 2016 cannot be underestimated. Neither can the colossal impact the liaison made on the saxophonist-composer himself. McCaslin's electronicafuelled album, Beyond Now, released later that year following the rock luminary's sudden death, was one of 2016's exceptional contemporary jazz releases and expanded the band's audience demographic. That's set to continue with the release of the follow-up Blow, but it might mean losing a few of his old listeners in the process. This time round, McCaslin takes another leaf out of Bowie's book by turning (almost) entirely to song. So his tenor sax isn't so much the driving narrative voice as previously: it's about having a more direct, high impact, closer to riffing on an electric guitar or an effects pedal freakout. For the most part McCaslin co-writes with two established alt.rock singer-songwriters: Ryan Dahle is responsible for the album's earworms, including the politicallyinflamed, but pretty mediocre, single ‘What About the Body?’. The Flaming Lips-ish ‘Great Destroyer’ is better, while the most convincing ‘New Kindness’ is the standout song on the album. The more Bowie-influenced Jeff Taylor's (who contributed the only vocal track on Beyond Now) ‘Tiny Kingdom’ weds Radiohead to Ultravox-like 1980s synth-rock. The ironically-titled riotous instrumental ‘exactlyfour minutesofimprovisedmusic’ is the strongest out of a few non-vocal tracks. Blow is patchy and indeed overblown in places compared to the saxophonist's high quality output in recent years. But it's a brave new world for McCaslin; let's wait and see where it takes him.