Becoming

"Becoming" suggests process rather than arrival, and Mammal Hands honor that implication structurally — the piece does not deliver a theme and develop it but rather discovers itself in real time, each phrase emerging from the residue of the previous one as if the musicians are reading the room's response to what they have just played. Smart's saxophone begins tentatively and grows in certainty without abandoning the quality of searching that opens the track; this is not development toward a predetermined conclusion but genuine discovery with an audience present. The piano's role shifts throughout — sometimes harmonic anchor, sometimes countermelody, sometimes rhythmic impulse — and this flexibility gives the texture a quality of transformation that matches the title's promise. The drumming uses brushes extensively, softening the kit's attack and allowing the melodic instruments to lead without competition. Emotionally the piece inhabits the liminal: not the person you were, not yet fully the person you are becoming, the discomfort and excitement of that in-between state rendered without drama. It is the kind of music that rewards return listening because what you hear in it depends substantially on where you are in your own becoming — different years yield different interpretations, and this responsiveness to the listener's life stage is among the rarer achievements in contemporary jazz.