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The Squid's Ear presents reviews about releases sold at Squidco.com written by independent writers. 
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Oboist Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack is a showcase for his work as a composer and arranger, which mines a neo-Third Stream vein with results sometimes resembling early Dave Douglas. Bruckmann's charts have a stately melancholy that suits the somber front line of oboe, trombone and viola. But things are always just a step away from boiling over: with live-wire drummer Tim Daisy in the band things are never going to get too cozy, and he drops in a few nifty surprises, such as the pots-and-pans opening to “Gearshifts & Parentheticals” and the vehement odd-meter groove of “Elegy for a Boiled Frog,” which comes straight out of the Vandermark 5 bag. Bruckmann's main turn as an improvising soloist comes on the sad, sinuous dance of “Extenuating Circumstances”; more often he plays an ensemble role, leaving solo duties to trombonist Jeb Bishop (who's in great form on “Sins of Omission”) and violist Jen Clare Paulson. The disc's hero, though, is Daisy, who really lets fly on some of these tracks. The drummer sits out the closer, though, a very pretty, through-composed arrangement of Ornette Coleman's “Lonely Woman” that harkens back to the days when Ornette was being championed by George Schuller and John Lewis.
