Zak Scerri - The Push Back

Rock Jazz

Summary: A genre-blending debut where Zak Scerri explores the space between rock and jazz, offering a thoughtful but still-evolving musical journey.

Zak Scerri’s “Almost Home”: A Reflective, Genre-Blurring Journey Between Rock Roots and Jazz Exploration

One might have called this record “An Australian in London”, and not without reason. That, in essence, is the story it tells. Yet such a title would only partially capture the deeper tension that animates the album: a guitarist navigating the porous border between rock’s structural directness and jazz’s more open, exploratory language. This is, above all, a record of transition, less a definitive statement than a work in motion, where identity is still being shaped rather than firmly declared.

That tension is immediately perceptible in the music itself. While the harmonic vocabulary occasionally gestures toward jazz, the underlying impulse remains rooted in rock. The true pivot occurs through rhythm: groove becomes the vehicle through which the music loosens, stretches, and at times slips into more improvisational terrain. It is here that the trio finds its most compelling footing. With Ross Anderson on double bass and Billy Pod on drums, Zak Scerri surrounds himself with musicians capable not only of technical precision but of responsiveness, players who can inhabit ambiguity without forcing resolution.

The trio’s dynamic is, in many ways, the album’s central achievement. They move with ease between contrasting states: lyrical passages that unfold with restraint, groove-dominated sections that anchor the listener, and moments of raw, unfiltered energy that recall Scerri’s rock lineage. Yet what proves most striking is the space afforded within this interplay. Scerri resists the temptation to dominate; instead, he opens the field. Nowhere is this more evident than on “Almost Home,” where Anderson’s bass lines are given time to develop, offering a sense of narrative continuity that subtly anchors the piece.

This attention to space and interaction speaks to the album’s broader context. It is Scerri’s first release since settling in England, and while one might be tempted to trace the imprint of his Australian origins, such distinctions quickly dissolve. The music does not present itself as a dialogue between two cultures so much as a gradual process of integration. The question is no longer where it comes from, but where it is going. Across the eight original compositions, spanning nearly a decade, from 2017 to the weeks preceding the recording session, one senses a personal narrative unfolding, shaped by movement, displacement, and the search for equilibrium. “Almost Home” itself captures that liminal state with particular clarity: the feeling of inhabiting an in-between space, neither fully arrived nor entirely elsewhere.

And yet, for all its conceptual richness, the album occasionally struggles to sustain a sense of direction over time. After several listens, one is left with the impression of music that circles its ideas rather than fully resolving them, not in a way that feels deliberately cyclical, but rather gently tentative, as if still exploring the contours of its own language. Themes emerge, take shape, and then drift, sometimes without quite arriving at a destination. This can give the listening experience a slightly suspended quality, where the intention remains perceptible, even if its full meaning is not always immediately graspable.

That quality is not without precedent. It recalls a form of jazz more prevalent in the 1970s, when albums often privileged process over closure, and where the act of searching was itself the point. Here, however, the effect feels less like a manifesto than a reflection of the group’s current stage of development. The music invites patience; it asks to be approached not as a series of conclusions, but as an evolving conversation.

Within this framework, Anderson’s double bass emerges as perhaps the most fully articulated voice of the trio, balancing clarity of direction with openness, and drawing from a palette of influences that feel both grounded and forward-looking. Scerri, by contrast, appears to be in the midst of a more visible search. There are moments of striking coherence, where his phrasing aligns seamlessly with the group’s momentum, and others where the line of thought feels more exploratory, less settled. Yet this very instability is also what gives the album its honesty. It is not the sound of an artist arriving, but of one in the act of becoming.

If there is a sense, at times, of the music turning gently around its own axis, it is less a shortcoming than an indication of this ongoing process, an openness that resists premature definition. One might wonder whether a different tonal approach, an acoustic guitar, for instance, could have further clarified the dialogue between harmonic and rhythmic elements, bringing the trio’s interplay into sharper relief. But such speculation only underscores the impression that this is a project still discovering its most natural form.

Ultimately, this album feels like a threshold. Across its duration, one hears a group gradually learning how to listen to itself, how to inhabit silence as much as sound, how to move forward without abandoning uncertainty. For listeners attuned to multiple musical languages, and comfortable within spaces where boundaries blur rather than harden, it offers a quietly compelling experience. More than anything, it suggests that the most decisive statement may still lie ahead, that the next record could well be the one in which these ideas fully cohere, and this evolving identity comes sharply into focus.

Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News

PARIS-MOVE, April 1st 2026

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