|
|
The Iguanas with The Cole Brothers
Thursday · Southgate House
It’s time once again for Cincinnati’s devoted Parrotheads to come out and shake their moneymakers in support of one of JB’s former inner circlists, The Iguanas. Since departing from the ranks of Buffett’s Margaritaville imprint label five years ago, The Iguanas have done an incredible job of maintaining their well-earned reputation as a party band with a massive groove while deftly proving that they are so much more musically. The band’s New Orleans roots and multi-faceted membership (guitarist Rod Hodges, vocalist/saxophonist Joe Cabral, bassist Rene Coman, saxophonist Derek Huston and drummer Doug Garrison) guaranteed that they would be grounded in a variety of music styles, from the raucous joy of Zydeco to the sizzle of R&B to the infectious bounce of Tex Mex to the full bore energy of Roots Rock. The amazing quality that The Iguanas bring to the mix is the ability to stir all those ingredients into a thick sonic gumbo without losing any of the individual flavors. This concept was brought to butt-shaking life on last year’s Plastic Silver 9-Volt Heart, The Iguanas’s first new studio album in five years, where the band re-teamed with producer Justin Niebrink, who handled the console for their first two Margaritaville releases, The Iguanas and Nuevo Boogaloo. Rather than revisit the past, Niebrink and the Iguanas boldly pushed the envelope by incorporating every musical spice in the band’s repertoire, making Plastic Silver 9-Volt Heart a triumph of style over trend. Even more astoundingly, The Iguanas are able to translate the feverish bump of their live persona in the studio, a feat not many party bands can bring to the party. And yet, even given their incredible technical skills, the Iguanas have to be experienced live for the full effect to by properly absorbed. Even if you don’t drink, you’d better call a cab after the Iguanas are done with you. (Brian Baker)
New Monsoon
Thursday · Jack Quinn’s
Being voted “Emerging Artist of the Year” by
The Iguanas with The Cole Brothers
Thursday · Southgate House
It’s time once again for Cincinnati’s devoted Parrotheads to come out and shake their moneymakers in support of one of JB’s former inner circlists, The Iguanas. Since departing from the ranks of Buffett’s Margaritaville imprint label five years ago, The Iguanas have done an incredible job of maintaining their well-earned reputation as a party band with a massive groove while deftly proving that they are so much more musically. The band’s New Orleans roots and multi-faceted membership (guitarist Rod Hodges, vocalist/saxophonist Joe Cabral, bassist Rene Coman, saxophonist Derek Huston and drummer Doug Garrison) guaranteed that they would be grounded in a variety of music styles, from the raucous joy of Zydeco to the sizzle of R&B to the infectious bounce of Tex Mex to the full bore energy of Roots Rock. The amazing quality that The Iguanas bring to the mix is the ability to stir all those ingredients into a thick sonic gumbo without losing any of the individual flavors. This concept was brought to butt-shaking life on last year’s Plastic Silver 9-Volt Heart, The Iguanas’s first new studio album in five years, where the band re-teamed with producer Justin Niebrink, who handled the console for their first two Margaritaville releases, The Iguanas and Nuevo Boogaloo. Rather than revisit the past, Niebrink and the Iguanas boldly pushed the envelope by incorporating every musical spice in the band’s repertoire, making Plastic Silver 9-Volt Heart a triumph of style over trend. Even more astoundingly, The Iguanas are able to translate the feverish bump of their live persona in the studio, a feat not many party bands can bring to the party. And yet, even given their incredible technical skills, the Iguanas have to be experienced live for the full effect to by properly absorbed. Even if you don’t drink, you’d better call a cab after the Iguanas are done with you. (Brian Baker)
New Monsoon
Thursday · Jack Quinn’s
Being voted “Emerging Artist of the Year” by jambase.com is an impressive accolade for a field of music that sprouts new, hard-working artists seemingly daily.
It’s particularly notable when the winner — in this case, the Bay Area’s New Monsoon — has only begun venturing outside of the California state limits within the year they’ve won the award. Yup, it was just a year ago this month that the seven-piece World/Jam band decided to fully dedicate itself to the long and winding road of extended, nation-wide touring. And it has paid off considerably, resulting in over 140 gigs, including slots at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, a two-night opening stint at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado (warming up for String Cheese Incident, Medeski, Martin and Wood and Sound Tribe Sector 9), and — perhaps most astoundingly — strong showings or sell-outs in markets completely brand new to the group.
Not too shabby for a band with modest beginnings, when two former Penn State students reconnected on the West Coast and began playing as a duo. When guitarists Bo Carper and Jeff Miller first formed the foundation for New Monsoon, the swirling of styles that would become their band’s calling card was already in place, with Carper’s finger-style acoustic playing providing a counter (yet still somehow natural) balance to Miller’s more jazzy approach. From that seed planting in 1997, New Monsoon gradually began to gain members and their expansion corresponded with an increasingly worldly musical curiosity and experimentation. Today, the septet is lauded for the way they fill in their good-vibes Rock base with a seemingly endless parade of disparate instruments, from tablas, congas, timbales and bongos (thus NM’s prominent, dynamic rhythmic thrust) to Bluegrass tools like the banjo and dobro. But as the band shows on their latest CD, Downstream, New Monsoon isn’t about trying to become new masters of various forms of the world’s music. Instead, the band skillfully yet uniquely integrates the exotic instrumentation into its own pure, breezy flow, which has more in common with the Allman Brothers or Rusted Root than Youssou N’Dour. The various trimmings greatly enhance New Monsoon’s danceability factor and also lend their sound the perfect springboard for extended improv-stretches, both of which should be on full display during Thursday’s Jack Quinn’s visit. (Mike Breen)
The Big Creak
Saturday · The Mad Frog
There is this new sound steadily popping up on commercial Pop and Rock radio that takes the rhythmic vocal deliveries of Dave Matthews and John Mayer, spices it up with something that nears a weird Rap-like technique, and then slathers it over slick, groove-riddled Rock tracks (I blame that awful “Chinese chicken” rap on that horrid Barenaked Ladies break-though song a few years back). It is (somewhat surprisingly) not quite as irritating as the matchbox 20- or Creed-derived drivel that still lingers like a never-ending flu on your favorite KISS-whatever type “New Rock” stations. But even more massive success from artists like Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz will make this sound omnipresent in the next year or so.
That’s good news for Columbus’ The Big Creak, whose new album, Just Left Town (released through local indie label, Opulent Records), is sprinkled with the kind of singles that’ll have Johnny A&R drooling. It’ll be those songs (“First Move,” “Half The Night”), where singer Jim Koch vocally bobs-and-weaves in a near sing/speak style, which will catch all of the attention and, should the stars align right, catapult The Big Creak into commercial success on a grander scale. But there’s a really good band within the skittish freestyle skips. From a songwriting standpoint, the band creates solidly constructed Pop/Rock — good hooks, an accessibility that fails to be trite and smart-to-clever lyrics. There’s little to find fault within the musicianship, the rhythm section is flexible and flawless, and keyboardist Aaron Bright adds more than just decorative bells-and-whistles, providing the backbone to some of the album’s strongest songs, especially the grounded, hyper-catchy “Just Left Town.” But there’s just enough generic residue on Just Left Town to keep it from being a great album. Of course, that doesn’t preclude being a commercially viable entity, which The Big Creak clearly is already. See ’em now before you see ’em on the MTV. (MB)
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2004.
