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Mike
Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle
Battery Milk
Hyena Records
Alt-jazz is a bit like dating your first cousin: Either you’re
into it or you’re not. While the multi-talented, multi-instrumented
musicians that make up the funk-jazz fusion group Mike Dillon’s
Go-Go Jungle sometimes sound like a ‘60s sci-fi movie sound track
gone berserk, there’s no doubt they have absolutely no intention
of stopping, whether or not anyone’s listening, and if that ain’t
jazz, then nothin’ is.
Backed by plenty of excellent sax-a-ma-phone work from KC native Mark
Southerland and the pure funkadellic bass vocals of J.J. “Jungle”
Richards, Battery Milk doesn’t even get started (much
like Friday night at the Foundation) until the noir-bizarre third track
“The Blame Game” kicks in, and from then out it’s
damn hard to ignore, especially with tracks like the freak-out “Lunatic
Express” and the Tom Waits-ish “Stupid Americans.”
Sure, this jazz-stuff is probably hard to get the hipster gang to swallow,
but since Southerland’s significant other is Midtown uber-hipster
artist Peregrine Honig herself (who also did the cover art for the,
uh...unique cardboard case, without drawing even a single panty
on it), maybe these guys can get some well deserved mainstream attention.
Given the sheer number of instruments used (including a lot of vibraphone
and old Eight-Track tapes being pulled back and forth, which sounds...well,
pretty muck like Eight-Tracks sounded in the day), pulling off a live
show would probably look like an orchestra of drunken monkeys, but,
man, would it almost certainly be fun...speaking of which, guess what!
Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle is playing April 10 at Davey’s
Uptown at 10 p.m. sharp (uh, yeah, right...), so go support modern jazz
(yes, that’s right, jazz), and buy some local music from a damn
fine band.
You can even forgive them for the paper CD cases. —Brandon
Whitehead (posted 02/23/07)
Robin
Thicke
The Evolution of Robin Thicke
Interscope
Having been both praised and cursed as a sort of poor man’s version
of Justin Timberlake (whom frankly he does look a lot like), Robin Thicke
has an interesting pedigree, to say the least. Son of Growing Pains
TV dad Alan Thicke (who, along with acting, wrote the theme songs to
numerous shows, including Wheel of Fortune and Facts of
Life, among others), Robin has bounced around B-list Hollywood
gigs since he was a kid, doing bit walk-on parts and such. Therefore
one would think his new album The Evolution of Robin Thicke
would be just one more toss-off work to join the junk heap of “I’ve
been a model, done crappy TV shows, what’s left…I know,
I’ll make a record!”
All that being said, you do have to give this boy his props: he can
sing, and with some help from Faith Evans, Lil’ Wayne and Pharrell,
Thicke has made a competent if somewhat repetitive album. Sure, he tends
to stick to that breathy falsetto that every boy-band everywhere uses,
and how much of the sixteen tracks here he actually wrote is questionable,
but this stuff is without doubt catchy, particularly on songs like “Complicated,”
where his voice blends well with the orchestral background.
Unfortunately pretty much every song here is a love ballad of one sort
or another until by track eleven, “Can U Believe,” you start
wishing he would get a girlfriend or something, and just shut up, already.
Really, the best tracks here are when Thicke finally stops whining
about women and gets a little funk in his junk. “Cocaine”
is an unapologetic foot-tapper of a song, where a simple bass-beat really
brings out his vocal range. With a little more range, and some songs
that don’t all sound like each other, Mr. Thicke might just become
fully upright.
You can listen and give him love (and he apparently really
needs some…) Feb. 22 at the Beaumont Club in Missouri (They don’t
allow any evolving in Kansas, you know). —Brandon Whitehead
(posted 02/16/07)
Elton
John
The Captain & The Kid
Interscope
The first track on Elton John’s newest album The Captain
& The Kid (released last September) — his last release,
Peachtree Road, was back in 2004, and yes, this information
was googled, thank you magical world interweb! — sums up the man’s
stellar, decades-long career of goofy sunglasses and outfits that used
up generations of the world’s rhinestone deposits pretty much
perfectly. “Postcards From Richard Nixon” is poetic, political
and so nostalgic in style it could be an unreleased Beatles single —
if you really dig ‘70s music.
Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, has always been basically
a cabaret singer with a honky-tonk attitude toward the ivories, and
an in-yer-face pop sensibility that switches between English-punk defiance
and mawkish sentimentality faster than a bi-polar supermodel, but hey,
it works for the man.
Frankly, few other openly gay musicians have gained as much American
redneck popularity as Elton John (example: seeing a 350-plus trucker
with Nazi tattoos lurching through a late-night bar unashamedly and
very drunkenly bellowing out, “Yer my ti-iny da-ancer, ti-tiny…”
— true story). Really: You got Freddy Mercury, that singer from
Judas Priest…then who? Lance Bass? No, Elton made it because his
music speaks to the loser-geek in all of us, as safe and familiar as
comfy slippers and a sleepy dog to curl up with.
But like anything, he works best in moderation. Only the biggest fans
will need to listen to all 10 tracks here, because really, one song
pretty much sounds like another (which is hardly a criticism: the man
knows his style, has perfected it, and done rather well in the money
department, don’t ya know).
As long as the man stays away from…well, airports in Asia, basically,
he can continue to be that tiny dancer holding a candle in the wind
because Saturday night’s alright. Ok, so that’s the only
songs that spring to mind — blame it on Wikipedia, ok? —Brandon
Whitehead (posted 02/02/07)
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