53. John Coltrane — A Love Supreme (1965)

1. Nearly bookending my ranking of the first 50 albums in the 1001 are records by Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk; one a hugely accessible work of modular jazz that included John Coltrane; the other a wildly complex bit of avant garde jazz. Coltrane’s A Love Supreme manages to split the difference pretty effectively. 1001 Albums writes that it “pulls off the rare trick of being utterly uncompromising yet completely accessible.” I might not go as far as to say completely accessible, but it’s close.
2. The album has a remarkable ability to run right up to the line of losing the listener before reeling you back in. Track 1 — “Acknowledgement” — opens with its core baseline before reeling into a set of swinging, high energy solos, then reverting back by adding lyrics to that baseline: “a LOVE su-PREME”. There’s a massive ebb and flow to each of these tracks, and it’s fun trying to keep track of what each instrumentalist is doing without losing the others at times.
3. At the same time, I do find myself losing the thread at times. Track 3 — “Pursuance” — is utterly frantic. I find myself in awe of how the quartet maintain sync with each each other; but I struggle to do so myself.
4. Nonetheless, as noted above — it’s still an accessible record. I could see myself returning to this in hopes of uncovering more of its secrets, better knowing its ins and outs. I am perhaps too much of a simpleton for its ways right now, but I can envision a future in which I get it better.

One Essential Song:

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