Some of the most creative guitar music of the past decade and a half has come from female artists. On the outer fringe of jazz, there’s the incomparable work of MacArthur Genius Mary Halvorson, along with her recently rising acolytes, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg. For art rockers, there are the stylistic and disjointed riffs and short solo bursts in the tightly structured songs of St. Vincent. For those with more traditional tastes, you have blues-infused rockers like Orianthi, Samantha Fish, and, most recently, the mega-hyped, Gibson SG-wielding 18-year-old Grace Bowers.
One guitarist who deserves the kind of publicity push being deployed on behalf of Bowers is that fiery fret melter from the icy north, Norwegian Hedvig Mollestad.Bees in the Bonnet, the eighth album by her long-running trio with bassist Ellen Brekken and drummer Ivar Loe Bjornstad, is once again proof of her massive and singular talent, with a sound that one critic colorfully labeled “Jazz Sabbath”. It’s progressive rock, metal, free jazz, psychedelia, and dark ambient all rolled into one exquisitely heavy yet organized whole.
Mollestad is the daughter of a Norwegian jazz musician who grew up studying the classic works of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, and Jim Hall. That was before she fell under the spell of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, King Crimson, Norway’s exploratory guitar great Terje Rypdal, and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra in her early 20s.
Bees In The Bonnet by Hedvig Mollestad Trio
A Norwegian Academy of Music graduate, she performed in various rock and jazz bands before forming her namesake trio after receiving the “Jazz Talent of the Year” award at Moldejazz in 2009. Her relentless touring and recording earned her many more accolades, including two Norwegian Grammies. In 2020, Downbeat named her one of 25 innovative artists who “could shape jazz for decades”.
The trio’s latest album arrives after a four-year break, their longest between releases. During this gap, Mollestad completed five other works, including the debut record by a new improv trio with keyboardist Stale Storlokken and drummer Ole Mofjell in 2023. That was the same year she was Artist-In-Residence at Moldejazz, appearing alongside adventure guitar notables like Nels Cline and Trevor Dunn. In 2021, she released the remarkable solo album, Tempest Revisited. That featured the muscular guitar- and sax-driven single, “High Hair”, one of my favorite Mollestad tracks.
According to Mollestad, the six tunes on the trio’s latest represent a return to the mercilessly metallic style of their 2011 debut album, Shoot!
The opener, “See See Bop”, sets the mood. It boasts a resounding crunch of off-beat quasi-boogie, with wicked time changes, hard stops, and relentlessly spiraling key changes. A little after the two-minute mark, Mollestad steps up to solo. She commences with a screeching note that seems to last forever before moving into a frenetic solo that fuses the heaviness of Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi with the spiritual wail of John McLaughlin. It’s Mahavishnu’s “Birds of Fire” meets Black Sabbath’s “Heaven and Hell” in a concise four-and-a-half-minute package.
“Golden Griffin” is a metal jig, a brooding reel with a guitar melody built upon hammer-ons and pull-offs. Like most tunes here, Mollestad and company never overstay their welcome in any particular mode. They constantly cycle through keys, heavy chords, and unison riffs that build tension, then provide release. The solo on this track demonstrates Mollestad’s tasty use of guitar effects and tones, where the most savage sonic assault has a pleasing undercurrent. Likewise, it can be said about the following tune, “Itta”, with its thunky, chunky beats providing a platform for Hedvig’s more cavernous, reverb- and delay-drenched solo sounds.
I particularly dug the tracks “Bob’s Your Giddy Aunt” and “Lamament”. The former features the slowest takeoff of a tune on the record. It’s a spacious creep of cymbal sizzle and ambient guitar noise before Brekken kicks in with a chromatic riff on the acoustic bass worthy of a spy movie. Like many tracks, it marches with purpose to a delightful cacophony. “Lamament” is the outlier. Perhaps my favorite on the LP, it is a peaceful and dreamy ballad with an unhurried melody, all soaked in deep space ambience and chordal volume swells. It is a style that brings to mind the work of Bill Frisell.
The closer and longest track, “Apocalypse Slow”, is another delicious slab of dissonant, demonic riffs with plenty of flatted-five tension and the wildest and most expansive soloing on Mollestad’s album.
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