I Am the Moon: I. Crescent is the first chapter in the Tedeschi Trucks Band's ambitious four-album cycle. In total, the project contains 24 songs spread over more than two hours and will be released in parts over several months. Each entry is accompanied by its own glorious film by documentary director and creative arts polymath Alix Lambert. It is a modern musical interpretation of The Story of Layla and Majnun, an epic 12th century Sufi poem written by Nizami Ganjavi about star-crossed lovers. Its themes explore interpersonal relationships, spirituality, frustrated desire, and the search for transcendence. The poem inspired Derek and the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. So important is the album to TTB, they performed it at the 2019 LOCKN' Festival. During 2020's COVID-19 lockdown, singer Mike Mattison read the poem and asked the band to consider its narrative themes as songwriters. Their writing centered on Layla being as "unattainable as the moon" and placed on a pedestal. "What would Layla have to say about all this?" became the album's m.o. Opener "Hear My Dear" is a midtempo ballad featuring twinned guitars, simmering organ, and lilting percussion over wordless backing vocals and horns. Susan Tedeschi sings "As we watch the world go by/There's so much we search to find/Holdin on to memories gone away...I was lost in the wilderness/That's where I heard a song." Derek Trucks' slide appends the verse, playing sweet and tender. Mattison sings the celebratory "Fall In." Piano and slide guitar exchange accents in the foreground as handclaps and a snare/hi-hat shuffle frame his vocal. Horns punctuate the sung lines as the tune morphs into a New Orleans R&B feel while flirting with gospel. Tedeschi and keyboardist Gabe Dixon offer "I Am the Moon" as a moving, spiritually insightful dialogue between lovers, asking poignant questions with generosity and insight. The band emerges gradually but ratchets up the musical energy to anthemic intensity as horns, slide guitar, and drums wind around them in a swirling frame. Trucks intros "Circles 'Round the Sun" in a raga-esque drone before horns, bass, and drum kit follow. Keyboards buoy Tedeschi's vocal, which maintains tension between soul, blues, and rock. When she sings "Do you know my name? Can you save me from this love?" it's a desperate prayer underscored by thunderous horns, funky clavinet, and killer sax and trumpet solos. The 12-minute closer, "Pasaquan," is an instrumental epic. It flows around a funky organ vamp before unwinding in an orgy of exploratory jazz, swamp rock post-psychedelia, and jam band groove. At the nine-minute mark, Trucks' solo alternately references the Allman Brothers' "Mountain Jam, Jessica" and Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" before making room for solos by others. He returns, carrying it out with another stirring solo. I Am the Moon: I. Crescent is dazzling in concept and execution. Tedeschi Trucks Band embrace this narrative with ambition, and expose its lessons with creative imagination, emotionally intelligent songwriting, and mind-blowing musicality. ~ Thom Jurek