On their debut album together, post-punk trio the Messthetics and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis arrived at the same point by following two different paths. Lewis, a player grounded in gospel and post-bop, grew increasingly adventurous in the years after delivering Divine Travels to Sony’s revived OKeh imprint in 2014. He became a crucial part of New York’s jazz and new-music community, where he met Anthony Pirog, an improvising guitarist who had teamed up with drummer Brendan Canty and bassist Joe Lally in their post-Fugazi project, the Messthetics. Pirog extended an invitation to Lewis to join the trio onstage in 2019, setting in motion a series of events that led the group to sign to storied jazz label Impulse! Records for its 2024 LP.
The deal with Impulse! Records placed the quartet in an avant-jazz lineage stretching back to John Coltrane and Archie Shepp. It brought Lewis back to the majors and conferred jazz bona fides upon Canty and Lewis, who had spent most of their musical lives at Dischord. The association with Impulse! also drew in listeners who might not have otherwise paid attention to an act on a rock-oriented indie, propelling the band on a tour through jazz festivals and clubs in America and Europe.
Adhering to the time-honored credo “cut it while it’s hot,” the Messthetics and Lewis rushed into the studio with engineer Don Godwin upon finishing their European tour. Those concerts transformed the group dynamic, thoroughly integrating Lewis into the Messthetics and distilling a chemistry that feels natural and unforced. Everything that’s on the debut is here, only intensified: The funk is deeper, the noise harsher, the beauty richer.
Take “Clutch,” where Pirog’s arpeggios create a sense of serenity that’s shattered by the entrance of the rest of the band. Canty and Lally churn with monomaniacal might, spurring Lewis to play bold, declarative melodies that Piorg answers with force. That dynamic can also flip: The rhythm section keeps “Universal Security” tense and coiled, letting Pirog and Lewis tear it apart with sheets of sound.
There’s a fearlessness in the performances that extends to the album’s quietest moments, such as the soft, reflective “30 Years of Knowing,” where Pirog’s deft, lyrical lines can recall the sweetly rounded tone of Larry Carlton, a fusion guitarist who regularly played with Steely Dan. “30 Years of Knowing” provides a palate cleanser between “Gestations,” whose percolating rhythms are skewed by Lewis and Pirog’s elastic hard-bop melody, and “Rules of the Game,” which is pushed off its soul-jazz track by vibrant, swaggering solos.
The shifts within and between tracks lend Deface the Currency a sense of perpetual surprise: Even after its contours become familiar, the particulars of the improvisation remain lively and kinetic. The album closes on the same fevered pitch with which it opens, revisiting “Serpent Tongue,” a 2018 song that became the Messthetics’ conduit to their connection with Lewis when they played it onstage. Titled “Serpent Tongue (Slight Return)” in a subtle nod to Jimi Hendrix, this rendition transforms a heavy rocker into free-jazz fracas, a squalling symphony of cacophony where Lewis and Pirogi match each other skronk for skronk. It's the only possible conclusion for an album in which Lewis and the Messthetics travel in tandem in pursuit of a liberatory, joyfully invigorating noise.
