This album was on track to be S tier until Jordan Smart’s fuckass soprano saxophone came in on the second track and then never left. Just kidding, sort of. Love Your Grace is perfect- the melody is so pure, it feels like a hymnal that’s been around for a hundred years, something with roots like Auld Lang Syne. It really makes the bass sing. I can (and did) listen to it on repeat without getting tired of it. I searched “Upright bass” on Facebook Marketplace because of that song.

The rest of the album heavily features Jordan Smart on the soprano saxophone, which was a bit of a let-down for me. And don’t get me wrong, I had a huge Mammal Hands phase in high school, around the same time I got clued into GoGo Penguin and Portico Quartet and fell in love with all that mostly-acoustic instrumental not-quite-jazz stuff. But at a certain point I’d mostly had enough of Mammal Hands in particular- I could only listen to so much of that mile-wide vibrato. So most of this album sounds to me like a Mammal Hands spin-off project, when I wanted to hear more of this Vega Trails guy. Who is Vega, and why does he Trails so much?