The album is divided into four suites, Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Pslam. The opening suite of Acknowledgement is a timid piece of smooth jazz, with a laidback piano leading the track on its course accompanied by some more hectic drums than what one might be comfortable around if one's only experience in jazz had been Kind Of Blue. Coltrane's saxophone play is of course the main focus of this song aswell as the others on the album, but its a more improvised style than what we saw from him on Kind Of Blue, aswell as more free form than Davis' on the same record. This is where the record gets a bit more daring. It's a more hectic record, the tempo is higher, the songs are longer, the repetitive melodies are lost for suites that more resemble a band jamming out in the studio.
It might seem chaotic at first glance, something that I personally have found as an issue with jazz that reaches higher forms of free improvisation. It feels unstructured which is something that might be hard to appreciate when coming from a background of pop and rock music, where songs are finely sorted into verses, chorus, bridges and so forth. It's a lot harder to keep track of what's going on in a lot of the more wild parts of the swamps of jazz and approaching the genre has to be done from a completely different outlook than one would normally go about around pop music.
Acknowledgement ends with the only vocals on the record. A repeated mantra of "a love supreme" echoes in the background as Coltrane quiets down and the first suite reaches a resting point. Acknowledgement is probably the most easily approachable part of the album for someone who's not a fan of the free form at play on the album. Its not all that abrasive and it keeps in tune with the simple atmosphere that you'd find on a record like Kind Of Blue or on a lot of vocal jazz records, be it by Monica Zetterlund or Nina Simone. This is what makes A Love Supreme another great stepping stone into the myriad of different iterations of jazz that one might find if one would be so inclined which is most likely also why its become such a praised record in the genre. It encompasses a ton of different styles and is a beginner friendly album for untrained ears.
The second suite, Resolution, starts of in a similar vein as its predecessor, with Coltrane coming out with a repeated groove to pave way for the rest of the track. It settles into a similar feel of Acknowledgement with the same hectic drums and continued free form playing from Coltrane. I'd argue this is another step down the rabbit hole and where things start to get a bit more abrasive. There's even more focus on Coltrane's solo effort and saxophone solo's jump out in the midst of all from seemingly nowhere.
Pursuance, the third suite, is where things truly reach avant-garde territory (atleast for jazz in 65). This time around even the tempo of the piano is raised, and the drumming reaches a whole new level. Coltrane deliver rapid note after rapid note leaving the track in an utter choas that might be quite impenetrable for someone who's not yet familiar with the style. It's a continuation of the ideas that Ornette Coleman begun on The Shape Of Jazz To Come six years prior and its the idea of spiritual jazz that Coltrane's contemporaries (Sanders, Ayler, Coleman and Dolphy) were the masters of at the time.
Pursuance opens with a bang, ends with a bang, and during the other ten minutes, there's plenty of bangs aswell. However it closes of and enters the last suite which is Pslam, an ill fitting closing track that tries to stray as far as possible from the free form play at hand of Pursuance. It goes into a more comfortable groove that doesn't crave the listeners attention as much as the other tracks had. I find it ill fitting because I would have loved to see even more progression in Coltrane's saxophone play, reaching even higher levels of absurdity.
When talking about the more avant-garde ideas at play on Coltrane's A Love Supreme, it is important to take into notice its place in the timeline of jazz muisc. Now I'm not very well educated on how jazz evolved throughout time, but I do know that Coltrane actually was a bit late on the ball with the free form jazz that plays a huge part on this record. Looking back in time we can see the already mentioned The Shape Of Jazz To Come playing a huge part in the development of this sound back in 59, aswell as Coleman's (the man behind The Shape Of Jazz To Come) continuation of the sound on the record Free Jazz from 61. The idea was already devoloped on a higher level when Coltrane released A Love Supreme but I believe that it shouldn't detract from the merits of this record which actually lies somewhere else: in its blend of accessibility, atmosphere and more daring jazz music that what was in the mainstream at time.
Coltrane would go on to move even further into the ideas of free jazz as time went by, Ascension being his most well known of the spiritual jazz records he released which was due for release only the year after A Love Supreme.
I do believe this is one of the most difficult records on this list which mostly contains quite simple albums that should be easy to appreciate after only a listen or two. However A Love Supreme and the other experimental jazz records on this list (which I'll get to in a couple of days since I'm on a jazz roll here) are not only difficult because of their take on more experimental music from the genre, but also because jazz music is such a different genre from pop and rock that newcomers to the music might find it hard to enjoy something as simple as Kind Of Blue if one isn't already acquainted with instrumental pieces, be it jazz or classical.
A Love Supreme
John Coltrane
8.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
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