STEREOGUM: The 20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s
STEREOGUM: The 20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s
BY PHIL FREEMAN
“19 Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society – Real Enemies (New Amsterdam, 2016)
Composer and arranger Darcy James Argue is just one of a small school of musicians who are revitalizing big band orchestration for the modern era. Each of the Secret Society’s three albums to date has been a conceptually unified large-scale work, and this is the ensemble’s darkest music to date. It tackles themes of Cold War paranoia, creating an alternate soundtrack to a spy thriller that plays out only in your mind. The rhythms are stealthy, the horns creep up like a tail you can’t quite shake; heard on headphones, this is music that’ll have you looking over your shoulder.”