A Blade is about accountability to oneself and to others, and the methods wherein these duties overlap. To heal others, you have to heal your self, and to heal your self, you have to confront discomfort. On “Thank You My Ache,” DePlume invitations his ache in, sits down with it, proffers his gratitude. “Thanks, my ache/For coming once more/When so usually I flip away,” he sings over a fluttering saxophone and grooving rhythm part, stretching out his syllables with the tender emphasis of a reunited lover regretting his absence. “A Paper Man” acknowledges the potential for avoidance and finger-pointing. “A paper man/Lighting candles/Doing issues/He can’t deal with,” he growls whereas his sax curls and drifts like wisps of smoke. “Do the flames blame the paper?” Nonetheless, DePlume’s anger at his self-destructive interlocutor dissipates over the course of the tune till he ends with a candy invitation to reunite: “Let’s attempt, whereas we nonetheless can/Let’s simply attempt/Would you be up for that?”
4 instrumentals run consecutively via the second half of A Blade, as if DePlume should attain past poetry to elaborate on his concepts. These songs act as a guided meditation on therapeutic, and DePlume can specific extra along with his saxophone than a guru with a well-thumbed thesaurus. A title like “Who Are You Telling, Gus” is adequate to telegraph the theme of self-doubt; the observe’s quavering melody, constructing from quiet hum to triumphant roar, conveys all of the drama of the inside seek for assurance. On the tune’s finish, Thompson’s rolling drums and Ruth Goller’s regular bass drop out and solely DePlume’s sax is left, whispering his hard-won secret in your ear.
Spirituality infuses DePlume’s music, making many songs extra like wordless hymns than jazz tunes. “Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity” does have lyrics, technically, however they float so effortlessly amid an ether of sax and violin that DePlume considers the tune an instrumental as effectively. You may guess what he’s singing based mostly solely on the celebratory verve of his sax strains, lifted from under by ascending piano and from above by hovering violin, a melody that works like a mantra. It’s a uncommon reward to make an instrument converse, rarer to make it talk such a significant fact: Dignity doesn’t need to be wanted and even prayed for; it’s all the time there, intrinsic in every particular person.
When DePlume’s voice returns on “Too True,” it’s as hesitant as a false daybreak, reluctant to interrupt the spell that he and his band have simply solid. The tune is about loss—the lack of a cherished one, and the lack of the self that might solely exist in relation to them. DePlume barely mutters its phrases, barely plucks its notes on an acoustic guitar. It’s maybe DePlume at his most susceptible, however he radiates energy within the afterglow of the album’s triumphant run of instrumentals—having carried out the work, he can face his ache, settle into it with out worry.