Caroline Davis – Portals, Vol. 2: Returning (Intakt Records, 2024)

By Matty Bannond

Threads of song are tied in knots on this release. It’s the second installment of Caroline Davis’ Portals series. In 2021, Vol. 1 meditated on the alto saxophonist’s grief and trauma following the sudden death of her father. The muse for Vol. 2 is her grandmother, the English poet Joan Anson-Weber, who passed away in 2010. Dialog is at the heart of the composed content and free playing.

That dialog involves Davis and trumpeter Marquis Hilland, as well as pianist Julian Shore, bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Allan Mednard. The same quintet featured on the first record alongside a string quartet. This time there are guest vocalists and spoken word artists, plus contributions from visiting synthesizers, organ and Rhodes. Nicole Mitchell’s flute takes a star turn on one track.

A seesawing call from saxophone and trumpet starts things off on “Gate of the Year”. The two horns are fractionally out of sync as they enunciate the written content together. That creates a disconcerting atmosphere that Davis fleshes out via a three-minute solo punctuated by intervallic leaps. Her upper register has a violin-like texture. There’s a bebop-adjacent feel to her phrasing.

Poetry by Joan Anson-Weber is incorporated into several tracks. The group improvised a response to audio samples lifted from family videos for “Back Again”. It’s a short and gorgeously intimate piece. Davis’ grandmother is encouraging her to swim. But we hear, in hushed asides, her concern about whether young Caroline is too far out of her depth. The free playing is sweet and tender.

There’s pain on this album too. Beneath ominous drip-drops from piano on “Only the Names Are Changed, Part 1”, something is wounded and weakened. An agonized vocal moan slips out between the fluttery techniques, high-pitched squeaks and thumped bass strings on “Oblivion”.

Portals Vol. 2: Returning deftly transposes the many-sided experience of bereavement and its subsequent sense of absence. Its twelve tracks are tangled around a common conceptual thread but tied in an inventive variety of knots. Instruments call to each other in familiar voices across vast, untraversable space. Will they get together again? Only Caroline Davis knows.

The album is available on CD and as a digital download here.