| Funky Jazz |
From the moment the first bars unfurl, warm, textural, almost cinematic, you sense that this album is not merely positioning itself in a crowded field, but stepping sideways into its own lane. The soundscape is unmistakable: a voice that glides rather than insists, a rhythm section that snaps with the assurance of a band that has lived inside groove for decades, and an orchestration whose fingerprints are so distinctive they could belong to no one but Wes Smith.
That singularity didn’t arrive by accident. Smith has spent his career navigating the fault lines between soul, jazz and pop, territory where categories blur, and where only a handful of musicians learn to move fluently. His résumé reads like a map of American musical mythology: Stevie Wonder, Booker T. Jones, Poncho Sanchez, Justin Timberlake. Sessions with Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke. A cameo in Whiplash, the film that introduced a wider public to the brutal romance of jazz drumming. Experience like this doesn’t just shape a sound; it reshapes the antennae. Smith hears the world differently, and he writes accordingly.
This is the kind of album that belongs to a very American tradition, those borderland projects where funk brushes against jazz, pop rubs shoulders with songcraft, and theatrical flair meets studio discipline. It is not meant to be a philosophical manifesto; this is music whose truth lives in its arrangements, in its staging, in the way a horn line can lift an entire track by half an inch. These are pieces that summon images without asking permission, that make your foot move before your mind has caught up, yet that reward stillness and attention just as readily. Joyful, personal, rhythmically oxygenated, the project folds Smith’s jazz sensibility into the pulse of Los Angeles, the city where groove itself seems to shimmer in the air.
The personnel only reinforces that impression. It’s essentially a West Coast “Dream Band”: drummer Donald Barrett (Lady Gaga), trumpeter Maurice “Mobetta” Brown (Silk Sonic), keyboardist Sam Barsh (Kendrick Lamar, Anderson. Paak), musicians who know how to make a small phrase feel like an event. Together, they stretch Smith’s melodic writing into something both rooted and forward-looking, a sound whose lineage traces back through jazz history while keeping its eyes firmly on the present tense.
I’m taken back to the 1980s, to a dimly lit studio in French radio, where I once slipped a Quincy Jones LP from its sleeve without knowing what I was about to hear. I remember setting it on a Revox turntable, the gentle thud of the stylus, and then, those first notes, as though someone had opened a window onto familiar sunlight. It was the kind of revelation that locks itself into memory. And listening to Smith’s album evokes the same sensation: a clarity, a familiarity, a refusal to let go after just one spin. Multiply that feeling by five tracks of this intensity, and the result is borderline addictive.
“Living in Los Angeles has been wonderful,” Smith reflects. “This album celebrates the joy and light of that experience, and the relationships that have made my musical path so exceptional.”
You can hear exactly what he means in a track like “Ventura Penthouse”, where the trumpet seems to erupt in spontaneous ascent, the kind of playing that feels less like performance and more like illumination. It’s here that the album reveals its hidden scaffolding: beneath its exuberance lies meticulous craft, an architecture designed both for impact and for distinction, particularly from the formulaic side of modern funk. The closing track only deepens that impression, strengthened by a trombone performance that does not simply support the arrangement but lifts it onto a new plane.
Smith, who has performed everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the White House, brings his trademark versatility and warmth to his first full set of original compositions. The result is a record that feels like both a thank-you note and an open door, an ode to the musicians who shaped him, and an invitation for listeners to step inside the groove.
And it bears repeating: Smith is not just a gifted tunesmith but a conductor of ideas, a bandleader with the rare ability to build arrangements that surprise at the exact moment they resolve. For all its brevity, just five tracks, this mini-album leaves an afterglow far larger than its running time. It is proof that when craft, joy and rhythmic intelligence align, the result is not simply music. It is experience.
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, December 12th 2025
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Musicians:
Wesley Smith | Alto & Soprano Saxophone, Flute, Alto Flute, Fender Rhodes (Track 4), Synths
Frank Abraham | Electric Bass (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5)
Donald Barrett | Drums
Sam Barsh | Fender Rhodes (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5)
Christopher Bautista | Trumpet (Track 2)
Maurice “Mobetta” Brown | Trumpet (Track 4)
Michael Cottone | Trumpet (Track 1)
Khrystian Foreman | Trombone (Track 3)
Dimitry Goredetsky | Electric Bass (Track 4)
Justin Kirk | Trombone (Track 5)
Track Listing:
We, the Funky
Sunrises
Baby Steps
Ventura Penthouse
Hdub Hiatus