#10

Dave Douglas & Keystone, Moonshine (Greenleaf)

No surprise here, really, as Douglas seems to show up annually on my list, he just continues to evolve and to impress. Keystone is the band which originally came together around the 2005 album of that name, a project inspired by the silent films of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, he of the infamous Hollywood scandal, but this music is genuinely affectionate toward Arbuckle’s work. The 2005 disc even included a DVD containing an Arbuckle short film. In 2008 the band remains the same save for the keyboard chair, where Adam Benjamin replaces Jamie Saft. DJ Olive is present again, and he’s given more room to provide atmospherics and quasi-instrumental interjections than he was on the first album. John Kelman of AllAboutJazz.com sums it all up nicely:

What makes Moonshine ultimately such a success [...] is Douglas’ ability to cloak avant-garde concerns in accessible surroundings. As deep and challenging as anything he’s ever recorded, Moonshine remains an album that’s as much food for the heart and soul as it is for the mind, and continues Douglas’ remarkably unbroken string of superb and uncompromising releases.