> For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.

I felt exactly like this about Coltrane for years, which I think now was a consequence of primarily being exposed to Coltrane via his work with the first great Miles Davis quintet. Coltrane's albums as band leader come a bit later in his career and he drops a lot of the Art-Tatum-translated-to-sax "sheets of sound" approach in favor of a more lyrical yet still unorthodox style. Any of the late-50s or early-60s albums with Coltrane as band leader and McCoy Tyner on piano are really very good. From my perspective Coltrane had the fire and competitiveness as well as the pop sensibility of a player like Sonny Rollins and the thoroughly studied devotion to "the new thing" of players like Eric Dolphy.

Anyway all that is to say that I heard screeds like this from Coltrane devotees for years and there is really something amazing there. The albums with Coltrane as leader are quite good and worth giving another chance if you're in the mood to listen to some good jazz recordings.