SML : How You Been
At the close of “Daves,” the sixth song on SML’s sophomore album How You Been, an unexpected sound breaks what feels like an extended trance: audience applause. However seamless the product that results from the psychic connection between the members of the Los Angeles quintet as they lock into a kinetic groovescape, it all happens live in the moment. To hear the jubilant response of those witnessing their instrumental alchemy only reinforces what kind of spectacle they’re capable of creating.
How You Been was captured much like its predecessor, 2024’s Small Medium Large, pared down from a pool of live performances into the more concise and immediate exercises of funk, jazz and genre-agnostic abstraction that make them such a satisfyingly fascinating ensemble. But the scale and scope of those performances has expanded and, with it, the potential for what shape SML’s improvisational energy can take. Anna Butters, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum and Gregory Uhlmann stir up an ecstatic kind of rhythmic magic on How You Been, tightening up their attack as their horizons continue to unfold.
While the static-laden sputters and electronic drift of brief, amorphous opener “Guttural Utterance” (great name!) suggests the kind of looseness from which this collection of pieces was culled, they don’t remain in this realm for long. The eruption of “Chicago Four” into a a blissfully glitchy IDM-jazz workout reminiscent of their peers and labelmates in Tortoise is where their chemical composition changes from gas to liquid to semi-solid, but always shifting and reshaping itself. Their funk goes even deeper on “Taking Out the Trash,” one of the album’s hardest hitting moments, courtesy of Butterss’ infectious basslines, Uhlmann’s barbed tangles of guitar and Josh Johnson’s frantic spirals of saxophone.
The more meditative moments on How You Been are often just as remarkable as their more climactic funk workouts, whether on the bouncy and bubbly IDM drone of “Sleeping In/The Loop” or the hypnotic slo-mo groove of “Moving Walkway.” But it’s hard not to get caught up in the thrill of SML at their most animated and agitated, kicking up a skronky storm on the title track. So when that applause arrives after the frantic game of instrumental pinball on “Daves,” it’s well-earned—and for that matter, impossible not to join in the revelry.
Label: International Anthem
Year: 2025
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