Juice

The collaboration between MMW and guitarist John Scofield has gone in starts and stops over the years since they sat down to record Scofield’s A Go Go in 1998. There was 2006’s Out Louder and a 2011 live album. Now the spigot has been turned on again for this fully collaborative project. Groove is the name of the game here, and the funk is slathered on thick for Eddie Henderson’s “Sham Time” and “North London.” The band almost sound like a late-'60s Blue Note jazz band on “Louis the Shoplifter,” with Medeski pounding out rhythms on piano as Scofield solos. They take it way out for the effects-driven “Juicy Lucy,” the sinister samba of “Stovetop,” and the more dissonant “Helium.” Of the covers, “Light My Fire” is surprisingly straight, while the band find dub bliss for a deconstructed version of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” They also bring it down for a contemplative “I Know You” and an elegiac and earthy (check Chris Wood’s bass!) reading of Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing.”