New - Citro, Brian - Keep Moving (Home) - LP

Brian Citro's upcoming album Keep Moving (Home) on Calligram Records is a great listen! Tasteful grooves, strong melodies, and Brian's lyrical yet modern guitar playing set it apart from the pack." —Fareed Haque
Keep Moving (Home) is Brian Citro's most ambitious recording to date, a fourteen-composition statement that fuses his life as a jazz musician with his parallel career as a human rights lawyer. The album documents Citro's reemergence on the Chicago jazz scene after years spent working abroad, performing Sufi music with Rajasthani musicians in New Delhi, Highlife music with Ghanaians in Accra, and his own music with a trio of Indian jazz musicians. "Keep Moving (Home) flows from my experiences as a musician and human rights lawyer," Citro reflects. "The more I traveled, the more I questioned what 'home' meant. And even as I planted deep roots in India, I longed to return home to Chicago."
The album is anchored by Citro's working quartet: saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, who doubles on Wurlitzer; electric and double bassist Matt Ulery; and drummer Quin Kirchner. The band's roots run deep. Citro and Kirchner made music together earlier in Salamander, while Citro and Mazzarella shared a bandstand in Tchaka, a collaboration with Haitian musicians. At the quartet's rhythmic core, the longstanding partnership between Kirchner and Ulery — forged through projects including Greg Ward's Rogue Parade and Ulery's own Pollinator — gives the music a cohesive, lived-in feeling. Mazzarella's large tone and fiery yet cerebral playing bring Citro's compositions to life, and his contributions on Wurlitzer expand the group's harmonic and textural dimensions. The quartet developed their chemistry through a 2024 residency at Dorian's Through the Record Shop in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood before heading into the studio.
Many of the fourteen compositions began as solo guitar pieces, which Citro then arranged for the quartet. Kirchner proved a crucial collaborator in shaping the different feels and grooves. The influences are wide: Thelonious Monk, Pat Metheny, Jeff Parker, and Kurt Rosenwinkel on the jazz side, alongside Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, Cass McCombs, and Neil Young, with the global musical encounters of Citro's years abroad woven throughout.
Opening tracks "Stay Where You Feel" and "The Take Down" set the tone immediately with fat, laid-back grooves and a vintage 1970s vibe that never tips into the derivative. Mazzarella is soulful and vocal, almost tenor-like in the lower register of the alto, providing an excellent foil to Citro's crunchy, effects-driven sound and probing lines. "For You 470" opens into an expansive rock ballad, providing contrast and demonstrating the band's versatility. The title track follows, showcasing Mazzarella's skillful navigation of Citro's sophisticated harmonies. The leader offers a compelling and virtuosic statement followed by a powerful solo from Kirchner.
In a very different vein, "Find Some Strength" moves through interlocking parts in a trancey 7/4 groove to an uplifting release appropriate to its title. Ulery's solo here, equal parts lyricism and dazzle, is a reminder of why he is one of the most in-demand bassists on the Chicago scene. "Risks & Opportunities" is slow and funky, Citro's distorted guitar and anthemic melody evoking the spirit of modern guitar heroes like Lenny Kravitz.
A solo guitar "Prelude…" offers a quiet departure from the full ensemble before "…to Restraint" brings everyone back into the room for a punchy, harmonically rich conversation. "Bloom in Gloom" — like many of Citro's titles — suggests hope in the face of adversity, an appropriate theme from someone who has devoted much of their career to human rights law. The album closes with "Take Your Time": Citro patient and expansive, his solo guitar evoking a vast, open landscape before allowing the final chord to ring out.
Recorded to tape at Chicago's Palisade Studio using vintage microphones and preamps, a large room for acoustic instruments, and the studio's in-house plate reverb, Keep Moving (Home) perfectly captures the sound and feeling of Brian Citro's music in this moment.