Art Howard -- Jeff Coffin "Go Round" Review

Published
December 2001

The name of this CD was Go-Round and the name of Coffin's band is Mu'tet. Note how I screwed that up in the review.

Go Round / Compass Records

Review:
Jeff Coffin
and Mu'tet

Go-Round

Review by Art Howard

As a music critic, you receive a lot of CDs that you can "hear" just by looking at the cover art. A 40-ish guy in denim with a vintage guitar is going to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan; a guy in a black turtleneck with an Ovation acoustic guitar is going to sound like Michael Hedges. So Jeff Coffin's new CD, Mu'tet, sat on my desk for a week because I was sure I could already hear it: Some danceable Maceo Parker-type funk that would sell to Coffin's young jamband following.

What a pleasant surprise to find that Mu'tet is actually a "serious" jazz CD. You might be able to dance to it (I can't dance to anything, so I wouldn't know), but that's not the performers' primary intention. Some of it is quite mellow and introspective, and some of it has that Knitting Factory "acid jazz" sound that might just bug a Widespread Panic fan's brains out.

Also "hats off" to Griffin Norman who designed the cover art. Mu'tet's packaging would be expected on a Björk or Radiohead CD, but it's radical for a jazz disc. I think if someone went to the store for the Blink 182 CD and saw this sitting next to it, they might just spend the $15 on Coffin instead of Blink just to see what was bound in those wild colors.