National Jazz Trio Of Scotland - Standards Vol IV National Jazz Trio Of Scotland

“It's kind of a double bluff calling it the National Jazz Trio Of Scotland,” says Bill Wells of a group that is famously neither a jazz band or a trio. “I was trying to be kind of perverse about it, calling it jazz and then deliberately not having anything that actually related to jazz.” On their latest album, Standards Vol. IV, the National Jazz Trio continue their engagement with classic and outsider pop traditions, subtly building on their characteristic blend of beguiling melodies and spare arrangements. There is even, dare we say it, a hint of jazz. “For this record, I’ve opened it out,” explains Wells. “There are drums on it, which I haven't really had before, even though they're sampled drums, and there are bits of improvisation like with the viola on ‘Passing By’ and ‘A Quiet Life’. That's the first time there's ever been anything resembling improvisation on a National Jazz Trio album. I wanted something in there that was improvised and quite out there, very out there as it happened.” That latter track also features a sampled irruption of big band jazz, as if Wells is transmitting live from a New Orleans second line, Dictaphone in hand.

These oblique visions of jazz aside, the album’s most striking development is its focus on a single lead vocalist in Kate Sudgen. This is the first in a proposed series of albums to feature one singer from the NJTOS, with Gerard Black and Aby Vulliamy to follow. Wells is full of praise for Sudgen’s beautifully unaffected voice. “It's just a case of her being a brilliant singer. I feel that she's underrated. She's as good as people like Liz Fraser. It's almost like her voice sounds like it's double tracked without it being double tracked, like Gerry Rafferty or Robert Wyatt. There's a graininess to it.”