Josh Cohen: We Are Home
T.Sound

Josh Cohen attracted justifiable attention for 2014's Out of the Bassment and 2020's Freedom, both of which showcase his virtuosic solo electric bass playing and talent for generating ensemble-styled soundworlds alone. But rather than carry on down that road, he chose to craft We Are Home as his first full ensemble recording as a leader. It's a dramatic next step for this graduate of Humber College and York University, but Cohen effects the transition seamlessly, helped in no small part by the superb partners he recruited for the project. Like him, keyboardist Jeremy Ledbetter, guitarist Lucian Gray, drummer Mateo Mancuso, and woodwinds player Rob Christian are some of the most in-demand Canadian musicians around, and Cohen's trust in them has resulted in a solid album statement that might be labeled jazz fusion (playing nylon-string and steel-string acoustic guitar, Elmer Ferrer also contributes to two of the eight cuts). Extending the collaborative theme, Christian handled production, mixing, and mastering duties and helped the bassist shape the album into its presented form.

If the performances exude the vitality of a live gig, it's explained in part by the fact that much of it was recorded with the musicians sharing the same room at Christian's home studio in Toronto, RC Sound (overdubs were added too). Intense rehearsals leading to the sessions also helped finesse the material into its final form. In Cohen's words, the album “feels both performed and sculpted—grounded in live ensemble energy but expanded through production, texture, and imagination.” As a title, We Are Home carries multiple meanings in alluding to the sense of comfort and belonging he feels as part of the Canadian jazz community and the feeling of returning to the country after stints in the United States and Mexico.

The album's been long in the making—begun in 2021 after the birth of Cohen's daughter, Litza—but never feels laboured; similarly, while the arrangements are multi-layered, the music breathes easily and feels spacious. Great care was taken to achieve a balance between composition and improvisation and ensure that solos would emerge fluidly within the performances. Cohen shares them with the others, but there's no denying the impact of his six-string electric. While he doesn't go out of his way to overshadow his bandmates, his presence is strong and his pulse unerring. Mancuso locks in with the leader solidly and is especially deft at moving quickly between a multiplicity of time signatures. While Ledbetter fleshes out the arrangements with piano and other keyboards, Christian is perhaps the one who most enriches them when he adds tenor and alto saxophone parts as well as flute and EWI. It's Gray who brings the harder edge to the performances, his guitar often injecting a searing, rock-tinged snarl into the proceedings.

Inaugurating the set is “Supernueve,” so named because it's structured around nine-measure sections (“nueve” is Spanish for nine) and because it riffs on the dynamism associated with a supernova. A crisp funk-fusion groove animates the tune, with a unison statement by Gray and Christian leading the charge. Breezy turns by Cohen and Ledbetter set an immediate high bar in the soloing department that a punchy Christian and grungy Gray match with their own statements. Given its placement in the sequencing and in spotlighting all five of the players, it's hard not to hear “Supernueve” as a manifesto of sorts for the project. As tight if slightly less aggressive is “Five on the Floor,” which grooves propulsively with the leader's bubbly pulse as its spark. Testifying to the calibre of musicianship in play, the group executes the tune's slippery 5/4 swing like it's the most natural thing in the world. Amplifying its fusion character is a warbly synth solo, programmed synth bass, and a molten, distortion-heavy contribution from the guitarist.

With Cohen weaving vocals into the arrangement, “Next Steps” distances itself from the others in segueing from uncertainty to affirmation, the quintet at one point evoking the blistering fusion of Return to Forever circa Where Have I Known You Before (even if Christian's flute suggests a tie to the earlier Light as a Feather). They don't ape the band, but it's not hard to hear Gray and Cohen delivering solos on par with those Al Di Meola and Stanley Clarke brought to Chick Corea's classic outfit. In contrast to the full-throttle attack of “Next Steps," “Newborn,” written, naturally, after the birth of Cohen's daughter, exudes a more delicate and tender feel, its embracing atmosphere elevated by the swirl of Mancuso's cymbal textures and Ledbetter's resonant acoustic piano. Each contributor, Gray included, shows he's capable of playing with restraint when the material demands it.

October 2026