To begin with – and we always begin listening a record by reading its title and the names of the tracks -, a glance to the cover of this disc informs us of a situation of conflict. The international outfit formed by Alípio Carvalho Neto (Brazil), Johannes Krieger (Germany), Alex Maguire (United Kingdom), Ricardo Freitas (Portugal) and Rui Gonçalves (Portugal) calls itself Wishful Thinking, the mental capacity to project our most ambitious desires. But the title of the CD is not so positive: “Wishful Thinking” tell us that music, since its inception when human beings were more close to nature and the animal kingdom, is a privileged way (because it needs no words) to express pain, frustration, rage and sadness. Truth is there’s an inner logic in this apparent paradox, because it’s precisely our melancholy that enables us to think about perfect societies of milk and honey. The music played by this quintet is the conciliation of the two forces that drive human conscience: one makes us look forward, the other pushes us to protest, and lament, and shout in anger. So, there’s tears (“Urs’s Epitaph – Der Hirt”, Al�pio’s tribute to a departed friend) and laughter (Maguire’s “Buffalo Bill”) here, and that’s fine. Good hard bop with a funky electric bass and a wild piano going from the stride tradition to God knows where, that’s what you have here. Take it.