Heavy and heartfelt country’n’strychnine from this hard-touring Chicago quartet. Closer to Neil and Graham than Lefty and George, Souled American specializes in low-key grooves that gurgle and bounce with songwriter Joe Adducci’s reggae-style lead bass, Jamey Barnard’s slapping New Orleans-style drums and Scott Tuma’s shimmering rhythm guitar, which sounds like pedal steel but isn’t. Sporting…
A decade younger than Fela Kuti, Nigeria’s Sonny Okosun(s) grew up on the Beatles and Elvis Presley rather than the country-western twang that influenced Sunny Adé, or the funk explosion that gripped Fela. He and his group blend highlife, reggae, funk and various African beats into an international style, an Afro-rock that dovetails nicely into…
Along with King Sunny Adé, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey dominates the juju music genre, that beautiful, spiritual and eminently danceable combination of traditional chants, hymns, highlife, rock and country- western. An easy way to think of juju is as inverted Western pop: interlocking guitars function as rhythm instruments while numerous drummers take on the melodic…
Underappreciated and understated metaphysical comedy music comes in strange forms. This is one of them. With words by singer John S. Hall and music by guitarist Dogbowl, beefed up by Kramer’s production and auxiliary musicianship, New York’s King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) produced two uneven yet insinuating records of bellicose nubbins concerning the secret guilts…
The Saqqara Dogs’ effective drug-trance music combines onetime Factrix leader Bond Bergland’s Pink Floydish psychedelic guitars with Hearn Gadbois’ Middle Eastern and Indian drumming and Sync66’s (aka Chris Cunningham, ex-James White and the Blacks) Chapman Stick manipulations (as well as guitar, other bass, cello and organ). I find it happily reminiscent of Manchester ethno-cultists the…
