Moms didn't dig [jazz], she just didn't go for it

Bird, Miles, and Max… she couldn't see it

Morning, afternoon, night, or anytime

That is, until I played her some Monk one night, late

'Round about Midnight time

I played her some Monk!

—Thelonious, that is

And now Mom spends many of her nights in Tunisia

—"A Colloquial Dream (Scenes in the City)"

I suppose you can tell that Thelonious Monk is a big name given that I've already alluded to him three times so far before actually getting to one of his own albums.

In retrospect, I can see that I came to this album with misplaced expectations. Knowing how revered Monk is and that this is one of his best-known albums, I was expecting something more avant-garde—something challenging and foreign; something that had moved jazz as a whole forward. Instead it's a… very fun and dare I say approachable listen? If someone wanted to dip their toes into jazz, this seems like a pretty reasonable recommendation to me.

Everything that I've read about Monk mentions his idiosyncratic approach to piano—his percussive attacks on the keys, "angular" melodies, and emphatic use of dissonance and silence. I'm still too much of a neophyte to discern those in any sophisticated way; I can hear the dissonance come through in places (particularly in "Body and Soul"), but I doubt I could pass a blind "is it Monk?" test.

Perhaps the above makes it sound like I'm down on the album, which isn't the case. There's a lot of fun and whimsy here; I particularly like the scratchy sax in "Bright Mississippi" and the main jaunty melodic line it features. "Bye-Ya" and "Sweet and Lovely" also stand out because I know them from an earlier album (not featured in our 50-week journey)—in "Sweet and Lovely" I prefer the halting ritardando ending on Monk's Dream to the chromatic (?) flourishes on the other album.

But overall, I'm leaving this week with a renewed appreciation for Tijuana Moods—I think that's closer to what I wanted Monk's Dream to be. Maybe by the end of this project I'll be able to better appreciate Monk's genius in its own right.

Favourite track: Bright Mississippi¹