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Robert Miller has been doing some amazing things as a musician both in and outside of the studio for years now, but in his ambitious new album with Project Grand Slam – The Shakespeare Concert – he attempts to bring the charisma from a New England gig into a confined recording environment in what could be one of his most daring attempts at musical immortality yet. He doesn’t come up short, with versions of classic PGS tunes like “Redemption Road” and their terrific cut of “Fire” sounding much edgier in this setting than they did originally, and from where I sit, this is exactly the kind of pandemic-era live album that few (if any) of his peers have been able to construct in the past two years.
Improvisational accents are not missing from the whole of this tracklist just because it was recorded from within four walls as opposed to in front of a proper audience, and I would point listeners to “Lament,” “The One I’m Not Supposed to See,” “No No No,” “It Is a Miracle to Me” and “I’m Falling Off of the World” as good examples of this band’s in-person prowess translating awesomely in the studio. There’s no discerning the moxie these players are bringing with them into these sessions from what you would normally expect Project Grand Slam to be doing on the stage, which is quite the statement to make when you consider how strong a critical approval they’ve received in both capacities in the past half-decade alone.
The jazz roots of “My Baby,” “Take Me,” “Constable on Patrol,” “Redemption Road,” and “Yeah Yeah” are difficult for anyone to overlook when listening to The Shakespeare Concert, and one could even make the argument that their underlying aesthetical foundations spill into the cosmetics of the music even more than they did the first time we heard these same songs. It’s like everything is getting another shot of vitality in this album that we wouldn’t have been keen to had we not heard this material as it was played for an intimate crowd in Massachusetts just last year, and as someone who has been following Miller’s work for a long time now, this is exactly the kind of personality-centered piece I wanted to hear from his camp in 2022.
All in all, I think it’s obvious that The Shakespeare Concert is one of the best records of its kind to land on store shelves this year, and it joins the ranks with the best LPs in PGS’s discography to date in my opinion. Robert Miller comes into this album with absolutely nothing left to prove – to himself, his peers, and even his bandmates, and yet he plays and leads these musicians as though there’s more on the line here than there ever was early on in his career. Project Grand Slam plays directly to the audience in this performance, and while some won’t consider this unconventional live record quite the same as the real deal, it’s as good as I’d hope to get this coming February.
by Jennifer Munoz
