A Blade is about accountability to oneself and to others, and the methods through which these obligations overlap. To heal others, you will need to heal your self, and to heal your self, you will need to confront discomfort. On “Thank You My Ache,” DePlume invitations his ache in, sits down with it, proffers his gratitude. “Thanks, my ache/For coming once more/When so usually I flip away,” he sings over a fluttering saxophone and grooving rhythm part, stretching out his syllables with the tender emphasis of a reunited lover regretting his absence. “A Paper Man” acknowledges the potential for avoidance and finger-pointing. “A paper man/Lighting candles/Doing issues/He can’t deal with,” he growls whereas his sax curls and drifts like wisps of smoke. “Do the flames blame the paper?” Nonetheless, DePlume’s anger at his self-destructive interlocutor dissipates over the course of the music till he ends with a candy invitation to reunite: “Let’s strive, whereas we nonetheless can/Let’s simply strive/Would you be up for that?”
4 instrumentals run consecutively by way of the second half of A Blade, as if DePlume should attain past poetry to elaborate on his concepts. These songs act as a guided meditation on therapeutic, and DePlume can specific extra along with his saxophone than a guru with a well-thumbed thesaurus. A title like “Who Are You Telling, Gus” is ample to telegraph the theme of self-doubt; the monitor’s quavering melody, constructing from quiet hum to triumphant roar, conveys all of the drama of the internal seek for assurance. On the music’s finish, Thompson’s rolling drums and Ruth Goller’s regular bass drop out and solely DePlume’s sax is left, whispering his hard-won secret in your ear.
Spirituality infuses DePlume’s music, making many songs extra like wordless hymns than jazz tunes. “Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity” does have lyrics, technically, however they float so effortlessly amid an ether of sax and violin that DePlume considers the music an instrumental as effectively. You would possibly guess what he’s singing based mostly solely on the celebratory verve of his sax strains, lifted from beneath by ascending piano and from above by hovering violin, a melody that works like a mantra. It’s a uncommon reward to make an instrument communicate, rarer to make it talk such an important reality: Dignity doesn’t must be wanted and even prayed for; it’s all the time there, intrinsic in every individual.
When DePlume’s voice returns on “Too True,” it’s as hesitant as a false daybreak, reluctant to interrupt the spell that he and his band have simply solid. The music is about loss—the lack of a liked one, and the lack of the self that might solely exist in relation to them. DePlume barely mutters its phrases, barely plucks its notes on an acoustic guitar. It’s maybe DePlume at his most weak, however he radiates energy within the afterglow of the album’s triumphant run of instrumentals—having finished the work, he can face his ache, settle into it with out concern.