Osaka Bridge is a collaboration between Scottish pianist/composer, Bill Wells, and amateur Japanese ensemble, Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Wells’s piano leads a barrage of horns, strings, woodwinds, and the occasional voice through light-hearted compositions that lack much emotional depth.
The Japanese ensemble is very amateur – and that’s apparently the point. The listener is supposed to feel empathetically warm and fuzzy listening to squeaking horns and out of tune instruments. The album’s promotional description states, “Maher’s horns strain and struggle . . . each note given all the stiff emphasis that you’d expect of a high school brass band at its first rehearsal, while songs fall in and out of rhythm . . . Of course, this is all part of the magic.” Basically, you have to know the back-story to enjoy Osaka Bridge, “a psychic harmony that is both awkward and glorious.”
Yet, Wells’s arrangements certainly are not glorious. Most compositions, such as “Liquorice Tic,” have a 1970s sitcom feel that really don’t drift pleasantly into the ears when mixed with straining trumpets. The simplistic arrangements are reminiscent of junior high concert band and are surely intended for this amateur ensemble. “Time Takes Me So Back” and “On The Beach Boys Bus” stand out as haunting and heartfelt, but that can only be said of a few tracks.
If you’re not a member of Maher Shalal Hash Baz and if you’re not a member’s parent, Osaka Bridge probably won’t receive heavy rotation in your music library.
