We're back in jazz fusion land, with a fun chain of connections leading to this week's album: we first started getting funky with Herbie Hancock, who was also instrumental in Jaco Pastorius's debut album. Jaco is back again this week as the sole bassist for this Weather Report album—a gig he secured by approaching the band's leader, Joe Zawinul, after a show and proclaiming "I'm John Francis Pastorius III. I'm the greatest bass player in the world." ("As was [Jaco's] habit," Wikipedia adds!) Jaco's debut album was great, but this is the one that made me a believer: in my listening notes, I wrote "the electric guitar is the star of this album". So imagine my surprise when I discovered there is no electric guitar on this album—it's just Jaco doing Jaco things on his bass.

The liberal use of synthesizers gives Heavy Weather a full and more modern sound compared to many of the other albums we've heard—and with Pastorius on the bass, it should come as no surprise that he gets plenty of time in the spotlight (especially on "Teen Town"). The many solos throughout the album (bass and otherwise) continually enthrall (e.g., the electric piano (?) near the end of "A Remark You Made"; the sax at 2:00 in "The Juggler"), but so too do the smaller ornamentations—the "da-ding" on the piano at around 1:08 in "The Juggler" is tiny but adds so much. "Rumba Mamá" feels like the odd one out to me here: recorded live in 1976, it's heavy on vocals and Latin beats, but light on everything else—a significant departure from the rest of the album.

The best-known song from the album is "Birdland," and while it's a phenomenal track (especially Jaco's bass near the start!), my one critique is that it ends up feeling a little too "sunshine & rainbows" for me. There's so much intrigue and anticipation at first, but I find the theme introduced right at 2:00 so irrepressibly upbeat that it dominates the mood, and collapses any emotional ambiguity into a one-note feelin' good. If you're looking for an easy smile, it's great; I only wish they had left a little more of that initial edge on it. But that depressive nitpicking of an irredeemable curmudgeon hardly dampens the bright skies on display here—I'll be returning to Heavy Weather season after season.

Favourite track: A Remark You Made