| Jazz moderne |
Nicola Miller’s Living Things: Spit! is elastic, fearless jazz about everything we try to say
Spitting is rude, primitive and a little dangerous… which makes it, at my opinion, an excellent title for an album. It is also what we do when something urgent has to come out, whether it is a hard truth or a burst of fire. On Spit!, saxophonist and composer Nicola Miller takes both meanings seriously, and the result is a gripping, inventive and often funny jazz record that gets better with every listen.
Nicola Miller lives on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and has become a key figure in the Maritimes’ creative music scene. Her debut as a leader, Living Things, came out in December 2024 on Cacophonous Revival Records, was nominated for MusicNS Jazz Recording of the Year, and was followed by a 2025 Paul Cram Creation Award and an ArtsNS Emerging Artist Award.
For Spit!, released on 7 August 2026 by Watch That Ends The Night, she brings back the same remarkable crew, now officially billed as Nicola Miller’s Living Things: Frank Gratkowski (bass clarinet and alto sax), Doug Tielli (trombone), Nicholas D’Amato (bass) and Nick Fraser (drums).
The album grew out of an idea about communication. All living things do it, Miller notes, but humans have invented strange ways of stretching it across distance with telephones, telegraphs and radio waves. She is fascinated by what is gained and what is lost when a message travels, whether through a wire or through music. Her answer is that music pushes the other way: it delivers its message in a spiritual, gut-level manner. You can hear that tension in every track. That is not a dry concept. It translates into music full of mutters, murmurs, whispers and shouts, as if the band were testing every register of speech.
The title track opens with a long, winding bass solo from D’Amato, with abrupt rhythmic shifts and bent notes. Once Fraser slips in with a crisp cymbal pulse, D’Amato settles into a firm walking line, and the horns begin to weave their quirky unison figures, smeared harmonies and drawling solos. It has a Mingus-like swagger, and the unusual twin-alto attack, with Miller and Gratkowski both on alto, gives it a distinctive bite. Gratkowski’s supple solo recalls Eric Dolphy, Tielli answers assertively, and a gripping alto solo that starts completely alone adds real weight. Midway, the rhythm section drops away and trombone and alto engage in a duet, the alto buzzing like a bee against Tielli’s gruff rumble. Even as the music grows unsteady, the piece never loses its footing, and the blues-tinged theme comes back in the end.
The three-part “Telecommunications” suite takes up half the album and shows how much range this band has. Part one begins in free time with grumbles, mutters and harsh whispers, then slowly gathers shape around another walking bass line. A key change around the fourth minute brings a brief, startling flash of beauty, and the rest of the piece glows dreamily in its aftermath. Part two is gentler, with Miller on flute and the horns building a spare, Ellington-flavoured harmony. It ends with Tielli’s trombone attempting to imitate human speech, a buzzing, deflated voice that comes so close to making sense without ever getting there. It is haunting and a little eerie, rather like the muffled grown-up voices in a Peanuts cartoon scored for orchestra. Part three goes in the opposite direction, with rowdy, New Orleans-sized fanfares interrupted by quiet reflection and a burst of percussive clatter from Fraser.
“Where’s the Line?” is the album’s most unhurried number. It keeps a steady mid-tempo and reliable harmonies, and it gives Gratkowski’s bass clarinet the chance to roam through its warm lower register, while D’Amato’s bass line weaves in and out of the horns. Then comes the cheeky closer “Drummers Are Bad”, which, naturally, is a showcase for a drummer. Fraser opens alone, trading phrases between different parts of his kit, and shows off his flair for rim taps and snare scuttles. The horns arrive with long, sustained tones and a few fiery bursts, and the piece ends on a sombre, ambiguous note with bowed bass and clear, ominous horn lines. Those last tones are free of the earthy roughness heard earlier, yet somehow feel even more distant and harder to decipher. Perhaps distortion really is the message.
Miller’s alto tone has the ragged looseness of Jackie McLean and the sharp, slightly ambiguous elegance of Ornette Coleman, and she loves to work right at the edge of consonance. Her writing is full of rich textures and colours, her band can stretch, snap back and bend again at will, and nothing here ever feels random. One writer called it elastic jazz, and the label fits perfectly: this music flexes and stretches in every direction, then returns to its shape. It will please post-bop traditionalists as well as adventurous listeners, and the free spirit of New York’s downtown scene (think the Lounge Lizards) is never far away.
The production backs it all up beautifully. John D.S. Adams recorded the album at Stonehouse Sound, Sandro Perri mixed and mastered it, and the artwork and graphic design are by Carola Nebbia, with layout by Benjamin Nelson. The project was funded in part by ArtsNS.
Spit! is thoughtful without being stuffy, wild without losing focus, and so much fun that you will want to play it again as soon as it ends. Miller’s compositions and her four partners stretch the rules of jazz while keeping hold of its most precious quality, the thrill of spontaneity. We can only hope that Nicola Miller’s Living Things stays together for a very long time.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, October 22nd, 2026
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
:::::::::::::::::::::
Order the album on the Bandcamp
Tracklisting:
- Spit! 10:17
- Telecommunications I 07:37
- Telecommunications II 04:42
- Telecommunications III 05:22
- Where’s the Line? 06:12
- Drummers Are Bad 10:31
Musicians:
Nicola Miller – Alto Sax / Flute (Track 3)
Frank Gratkowski – Bass Clarinet / Alto Sax (Track 1)
Doug Tielli – Trombone
Nicholas D’Amato – Bass
Nick Fraser – Drums
All Compositions by Nicola Miller
Recorded at Stonehouse Sound by John D.S. Adams
Mixed and mastered by Sandro Perri
Artwork and Graphic Design by Carola Nebbia
Layout by Benjamin Nelson
Funded in part by ArtsNS