Secret Keeper, the duo of acoustic bassist Stephan Crump and electric guitarist Mary Halvorson, started working together about four years ago and released Super 8 (Intakt) in 2012. While that disc empha- sized their spontaneous inclinations in an atypical duo format, Emerge highlights how this musical pairing has evolved together and apart during the past three years.
The big advances on Emerge are the compositions themselves, all but one of which is a Crump or Halvorson piece. On Super 8, mostly brief statements were combined into three thematically linked sections. Here, each tune is more developed, and these structures are ideal for their quietly far-reaching improvisations. But, surprisingly, Emerge begins with the duo's interpretation of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do." On this opener, Halvorson's bent notes echo lap steel guitar, but her staccato charge is all her own, as is Crump's warm tremolo response. Her remarkable sense of dynamics shape "In Time You Yell" and "Bridge Loss Sequence." She and Crump also emphasize tension, as much as close harmony, and gradually ease into her quietly frenzied solos. While those flights are immediately noticeable when she's in the upper range, what becomes more striking on repeated listens is how consistently clean her lines are-distortion is not a necessary part of her arsenal. Likewise, even her disjointed strumming on "Turns To White Gold" never loses its adherence to the melody. With Secret Keeper making such a leap between these two discs in such a short time, Crump and Halvorson always sound like they're planning a few steps ahead.
