Pigeons Playing Ping Pong - Day in Time (2024)

Country: USA
Style: Funk Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It seems strange, given such a memorable band name, that I haven't heard of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong before, but they've been around since 2009 and this is their seventh album. Clearly I've been missing out. By the way, that name was taken from the description of a scientific experiment in a textbook, but that doesn't mean this is math rock. The Pigeons play funk rock that's almost always driven by the bass of Ben Carrey. The vocals of Greg Ormont are very clean and the sound is often poppy—the earworm chorus in The Town, the obvious single which opens up the album, reminds of Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk—but they also love to jam and I fell into a lot of these guitar solos.

Let's get The Town out of the way quickly, because it's the sort of song that's so infectious that it's easy to just slap that one on repeat and forget that it's actually opening up an album. There are a further ten songs on Day in Time, plus a thirty second outro that sounds like it was ripped from an old and warped cassette. I can't say that any approach The Town on the infectious front, but a few of these songs come close to being as perky, such as the title track and Fall in Place. I had a concert to attend tonight and I had The Town and Day in Time playing in my head all the way there.

Funk rock is usually driven by the bass and Ben Carrey is a thoroughly impressive bedrock for the band to build on. He's there on The Town and Day in Time, of course, but it's impossible to ignore him on Beneath the Surface and Sorcerer, let alone when he's stealing the spotlight with bass solos on tracks like Alright Tonight and Overtime. There are moments dotted here and there on the album, often in the intros to songs, when he doesn't do anything at all and it feels acutely like something's been lost. Fortunately he soon shows up and all is right with the world again.

Once Carrey has set down a bass line, many of these songs are tasked with a pretty basic question as to whether they want to be pop or rock. The more Greg Ormont's vocals nail a melody, the more pop it becomes, whether it's the funk of The Town, the disco of Let the Boogie Out or the reggae of My Own Way. The more Ormont focuses on his guitar and Jeremy Schon joins him—I don't see a credit to divvy up lead and rhythm duties, so I presume they swap them—, the more it turns into a rock album. Just check out Skinner, which doesn't just have the best guitar solo on the album; it's seriously extended because this is a five minute instrumental.

It's how they put those two approaches together to create one sound that makes this band work so well. The clean lines, whether we're talking vocals or guitar, suggest that this is what we might hear if Lenny Kravitz handed his guitar to Eric Clapton and his microphone to Robert Cray. Late in Feelin' Fine, there's a jam that's absolutely glorious but, prior to that, the song is so clean that we'd perhaps be forgiven for assuming that they're aiming for the blandest audience possible—like people who think the sun shines out of Jimmy Buffett's margarita glass—but just can't resist rocking out anyway.

And they rock out a lot here. The Town ought to be too commercial to do that but there's a tasty guitar solo in the second half; Alright Tonight boasts another one; and Day in Time has one more that comes right after a keyboard solo. That's three in three songs and there are a bunch more to enjoy before we get to that instrumental workout on Feelin' Fine eleven tracks in. Add to that an array of extra little touches, like the keyboard flurry late in Day in Time that reminded me of early Marillion; the reggae jangle of the guitars in My Own Way and Fall in Place; or the funky horns in Let the Boogie Out that elevate the whole thing.

It all made me recall a gig review in Kerrang! way back in the late eighties that sent someone to an Allman Brothers gig who clearly had no idea who they were. They fully expected granddad rock and were prepared to sit through it, but they got a blistering jam show instead that utterly blew their mind. That's how I imagine Pigeons Playing Ping Pong gigs to be, with grandmas showing up because they just sound so nice in the background of Murder She Wrote or some such show and hearing tight rocking jams instead that make them question what they've missed over decades.

And I'll shut up now, except to make a note for my future self to figure out what that phrasing is in Overtime that I absolutely recognise but somehow can't place. I listened to a couple of tracks late one evening to see if this was something I'd be up for reviewing. Obviously I was, but what I got on an eleven track album was so much more than I heard in that pair of openers, even though anyone listening to this would have to include The Town as a highlight. I'm one of those, though Skinner is my top pick and Day in Time and Feelin' Fine aren't far behind.

So I may be a little late, but I've caught up with Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and now have six prior albums to seek out. Have you caught up with them yet? You should. Your day will feel better for it.

WONDERboom - Hard Mode (2024)

Country: South Africa
Style: Funk Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It's oddly hard to find an online discography of WONDERboom, given that they formed as far back as 1996 and have been active ever since, winning awards but releasing EPs and singles rather than full length studio albums. They celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2021 with WONDERboom 25, a set of re-recordings of favourite songs from their earlier releases, but this is a new studio album, potentially their fifth to follow on from 2017's Rising Sun, and it's a wildly versatile affair.

I saw them listed as funk rock, which is as good a description as any, I guess, but they refuse to be constrained by any one genre label, even if it's as high level as pop or rock, because they're happy to play both. There's a lot of rock here, much of it falling somewhere within alternative or arena rock, but there's lots of pop here too, from across the spectrum, trawling in ska, goth, punk, even R&B. As such, it's impossible to even attempt to identify high level influences. The band obviously listen to a broad range of music and let everything they hear filter into their own sound.

The heaviest song is probably the opener, My Name is Freedom, which is an earworm of a stomp, built as much on handclaps and audience participation as guitars and drums. It seems cheap for me to throw out John Kongos as an immediate comparison, given that he was also South African, but it's there and it's overt. However, one of the softest songs is Deadly, the pop song that has an unenviable task in following My Name is Freedom and approaches that by not doing anything at all similar. Apparently, when WONDERboom started out, so far back that they were still called the Electric Petal Groove Machine, they supported Simple Minds on a South African tour. That seems entirely appropriate listening to this song.

From one rock song and one pop song, the next four mix pop and rock in fascinating ways and that ends up being a far more common approach here. Most of my favourite songs here are both pop and rock without ever really being pop rock. Alive is a tasty mix of U2 and Nick Cave and the Cure. Overground (Subway Queen) ups the U2 proportion of that but adds a Japanese melodic theme. Avalon adds some Madness in its perky ska beat, funky piano and quietly cool attitude, though it goes elsewhere for its chorus. Similarly, Miss Demeanour is commercial punk in its verses, like an Iggy Pop song but with the incessant drive of Hawkwind, the lyrics spat in bars rather than sung, but then it all goes big and clean for its chorus.

Avalon counts as the midpoint, there being eleven songs on offer and all of them being of similar length, a radio friendly three minutes and change. I like the first half a lot, wherever it goes. I'm less fond of the second half, partly because it's more pop than rock, partly because its songs have less character to them and partly because one of them, very deliberately, sparks cringeworthy memories. However, the second half wraps up with Voodoo Doll, which is both pop and rock, has character to spare and is as catchy as anything else here, the earworm opener notwithstanding.

The cringy song is Hip, which is eighties hip, sometimes painfully so, even if the words talk about an earlier time. It's firmly pop but it goes all over the place, perhaps mostly to Michael Jackson but to plenty of others, including trends that I've tried to forget. It feels like the sonic equivalent of the sort of fashion catalogue that parents bought Christmas presents from that embarrassed everyone because the trends had moved on by the time the wrapping paper came off. There's an early white rapper feel to it and I'm not talking about Blondie's Rapture or Adam Ant's Ant Rap, but the folk who dressed in pastels and pretended to be black, the predecessors of Vanilla Ice.

The songs after it but before Voodoo Doll are mostly inconsequential compared to the rest of the material here. Prodigal Son is a logical follow-up to Hip but shifting in time from Michael Jackson to Prince. Pretty Things is quieter; it's pleasant enough and it sounds OK in isolation but its Cure-esque pop doesn't enforce itself. Rabbit Hole manages a little better, but it's another subtle pop song and I was having sinking feelings by this point in the album when Voodoo Doll shows up to be the saviour of the side, a Hallowe'en flavoured Adam Ant alt rock song that's all hook.

This is about as different as can be imagined to Toxic Carnage, but I do try to cover the spectrum here at Apocalypse Later and there are wonderful songs to be found on each of these albums. It's joyous to me to move from Thrashing Over Thirty to Alive. They're both rock songs, even if they're not alike in almost any other way, except maybe in how they nod back to the eighties. It's a great time to be alive, with so much varied music easily available to a global audience online. Enjoy it.

DeWolff - Love, Death & In Between (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Soul/Funk/Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Only yesterday, I reviewed the new Mono Inc. album, which was a new entry to the German album charts at number one. Today, I'm reviewing the new one from DeWolff, which I see was a new entry to the Dutch album charts at, guess what, number one. Their previous album, Wolffpack, which got an 8/10 from me back in 2021, only reached the second spot, held from the top by the Foo Fighters. There's something very positive going on over there in Europe. Checking other countries tells me that the top two albums in Finland in mid-January were VV and Turmion Kätilöt, both of which I've reviewed, even if I can't find newer data. Suddenly I'm a chart watcher.

I'm going with an 8/10 for this album too, even though it's a sprawling sixty-eight minute dive even further into genres in which I have little background. Wolffpack mixed its psychedelic rock and its southern rock with heavy doses of the sounds of the seventies: especially funk and soul, but even a little disco. This does the same but the ratios are different, keeping a rock base mostly intact but venturing far deeper into soul, funk, gospel and blues. Last time the balance was often between a laid back Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stevie Wonder, but here it's more like John Kongos and Nina Simone. There's a lot of Sinnerman here but with many nods to far less epic music too.

It starts of as it means to go on, as if we're tuning into a seventies soul show. Are you ready for the Night Train? It feels like an MC has given the cameraman approval to pan over to the stage, where DeWolff are about to erupt into motion. And they do exactly that, because this was apparently an entirely live recording, not in the sense of performing on stage but in the sense of recording right into the machines as a band without any overdubs added in post-production. This is precisely what they played in the studio and it feels vibrant for having that approach.

There are only three members of DeWolff, Robin Piso and the van de Poel brothers, but there are a host of others contributing to this one. I count eight of them, whether they're providing bass to the sound, adding vocals or guitar or keyboards, or jumping in with flute, trumpet or trombone as needed, with a special mention here due to Nick Feenstra for a fantastic saxophone solo to finish up Message for My Baby. Sometimes they sound like a trio, plenty of space between the band and the floating Hammond organ cloud behind them. Sometimes they become a full on party.

Because the album is so long, there are a dozen songs on offer, even with Rosita clocking in at the surprising length of sixteen and a half minutes. Only Wontcha Wontcha otherwise reaches the six minute mark, so this isn't bloated, especially given that that one is one of the party songs, finding its way into a full on carnival celebration in song form around the halfway mark. Rosita simply has more to tell and it does that in a set of movements that continually grab us into its mindsets. It's grabbing for us at the five minute mark when it goes quiet and introspective. It's grabbing for us halfway through when it turns into a revival meeting.

Pablo van de Poel, the guitarist in DeWolff and one of its vocalists, has talked about how deep the dives were that they were taking into old soul, gospel and classic R&B, checking out bands like the Impressions, the Clovers and the Soul Stirrers, along with bigger names we might remember such as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and the Staple Singers. He's also mentioned attending a sermon by Al Green at his own church in Memphis, which he describes as "a life-changing experience, musically." This is Pablo and DeWolff treating music as religion, hurling emotions at the tape recorder to be recorded as waveforms.

There's a lot here, far more than I can do justice to within a sub-thousand word review. I must say that certain songs leapt out at me, but also that none of those that didn't are filler. The weakest song here is strong, merely overshadowed by its company. I gravitated towards the blues songs, a delightful guitar from Pablo van der Poel on Will o' the Wisp and even more delightful Hammond organ from Robin Piso. Mr. Garbage Man is a nice slow blues tune and Gilded (Ruin of Love) is laid back glory in four minutes. I liked the party songs too, when the band went full on church gospel or Caribbean carnival or just John Kongos groove.

There's so much here to enjoy, even if I can't tell you the derivation of much of it, and it's full of an obviously live energy. Congratulations to DeWolff on that number one on the Dutch album charts and I hope you stay there for quite a while yet.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Unlimited Love (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Funk Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Apr 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This being a more fractured year for me than 2020, I'm still playing catch-up with the major bands who put out new material this year and that's why I'm reviewing the Chili Peppers's twelfth album right before they release their thirteenth. This is Unlimited Love, released in April, and Return of the Dream Canteen, due in mid-October, was recorded during the same sessions. Given that this is already seventy plus minutes in length, that means that they must have seriously felt the urge to create during that pesky COVID period of potential downtime.

They seemed like the logical contrast to follow Dir en Grey, because they're complete opposites in so many ways. In particular, they're almost comfort food. Dir en Grey are complex and ambitious, a band to listen to actively to figure out what they're doing on any particular song and whether that works for us or not. The Chili Peppers are chill music, easy listening for the alternative era, and it's fair to say that a new album by them feels comfortable and familiar even on a first listen. It's hard to find a second mood but they're so good at their one mood that it doesn't matter.

The songs here, and there are no fewer than seventeen of them, merely play with the sliding scale from laid back chill to bouncy chill, and the levels they're happiest with are mostly defined by the first four songs. Calmest is Not the One, which is ocean smooth. Then comes opener Black Summer, the first single, which is Californication-levels of commercial. Here Ever After is funkier, with Flea's bass ratcheting up in prominence and it's natural to move to it. Wildest is Aquatic Mouth Dance, a terminally funky number that continues to build throughout, from Flea's hyperactive lead bass to the layers of experimental brass that show up when he introduces his trumpet.

The big change this time out, because it's been six years since the band's last studio album, is the swapping of guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who had been with them for a decade, for an old favourite. No, not Dave Navarro, who surprisingly only had five years to his name, in but John Frusciante for his third stint. He originally joined in 1988, so he was on their big early albums, Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, where he strongly influenced a soothing of their sound. He left in 1992 but returned in 1998, for their most successful album, Californication, the logical end to that soothing.

When he left again, in 2009, it was to make electronic music, taking a wild left turn into acid house and other genres. There's an irony in that, even though he spent years as an heroin addict, almost dying because of it, he's far more prolific as a musician than the Chili Peppers themselves, having as many solo albums to his name, plus four more under the name of Trickfinger and a further trio of collaborative releases, including one with Josh Klinghoffer, who both replaced him in this band and who he then replaced in turn.

I wondered how his presence would change the band's sound, given that he absolutely did that on his previous two stints with them. I especially wondered how he'd introduce electronica into their music and I'm surprised to find that it isn't a huge amount, at least at this point. There's some on Poster Child, which is as notable for its sonic backdrop as for Anthony Kiedis's skilful cadence, and Bastards of Light builds out of his keyboards, but he makes his presence far more known on guitar and, quite frankly, he's the best thing about the album.

Remember when I said that everything here shifts up and down a sliding scale from laid back chill to bouncy chill? Well, that's true for the rest of the band, but not for Frusciante. He lets his guitar rip on The Great Apes, wail on Watchu Thinkin' and soar on It's Only Natural. He gives serious edge to She's a Lover, which is otherwise routine seventies funk/soul and serious urgency to Bastards of Light and These are the Ways, which are heavier than I remember the Chilis being in forever. Each of these songs sounds good but they're all chill until Frusciante mixes it up.

And now I'm eager to see what they come up with next which is a feeling I haven't felt for decades. The Chilis are one of the easiest bands in the world to like, because everything they do musically is inherently accessible, but we move right along after we hear them and go about our day. Maybe the return of John Frusciante will also return some balls to what they do. The seeds are obvious. I think it's fair to say that the second half of most of these songs is better than the first, when they let him loose. And he's exactly why I'm giving it a 7/10. I'd go with a pleasant but inconsequential 6 otherwise and add that it runs too long.

Slammin' Gladys - Two (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Glam Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 12 Feb 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I thought Slammin' Gladys sounded familiar but I think I'm thinking of Smashed Gladys, whose singer, Sally Cato, sadly passed away last year. Slammin' Gladys do go back quite a way but not quite that far. Smashed Gladys were mid eighties, with albums in 1985 and 1988. Slammin' Gladys were nineties, their only prior album dating back to 1992, with what may be the most overt phallic symbol I've yet seen on an album cover. Almost thirty years later, the same line-up is back with a second and it's good stuff, if a little less energetic than I might expect for such a long overdue return to the studio.

They play their hard rock with a strong shot of glam and a chaser of funk, which translates to a sound that moves back and forth between AC/DC and the Faces, but with a plethora of extra influences which shake it up considerably, most obviously Extreme. Toxic Lover is like Extreme playing We Didn't Start the Fire with the AC/DC rhythm section. Dragon Eye Girl ditches AC/DC and Durango ditches Extreme too, leaving a song that could work for a smooth Rod Stewart or a less drunk Dogs d'Amour.

The best early song, though, is Lose My Mind, which is sassy, funky and neatly catchy. It's an odd song because it talks about drinking and smoking too much and going a little mad sometimes (hey, haven't you?) but it's not remotely as debauched as the Quireboys or the aforementioned Dogs. We don't buy into the band having to be propped up by roadies while they record the song, which would have been the only way to improve it. It's not squeaky clean and it's not pop glam in the way that Green Day are pop punk, but it's certainly commercial.

One reason for that may be that the mix seems very clean, not thin but emphatically not thick, with J. J. Farris's guitar dampened down a lot further than it ought to be. I like the music but I'd like it much more if it had some real oomph added in the mixing booth. A song like Lost in Texas tries, with a neat harmonica and a backing that lightens for the verses and heavies up before the chorus, but the mix is weak. This song ought to crush, but it merely entertains with the promise of what I'm sure it'll be on stage.

The most obvious sound is the voice of Dave Brooks, which is characterful and highly appropriate for funk rock, even if he obviously hasn't destroyed his throat through a life of debauchery over the three decade gap in between studio visits. His most raspy vocals are more like Axl Rose than Rod Stewart or Tyla. I don't know what he's been doing in that time because the rap on Light Up suggests that he has a taste in music that hasn't moved on from 1992. Everything in the sound here is from then or earlier, whether it's funk, glam, rock or that rap section, which is a lot closer to Blondie than Dr. Dre, not that I'm complaining about that.

Sometimes it's much earlier, like Ice Water, which is a delightfully bluesy old rock 'n' roller with nods back to Elvis and the Grand Ole Opry and, bizarrely, the mix is very different here. The guitar has a lot more oomph, the drums have a lot more oomph, we can hear Al Collins run up and down the fretboard of his bass like he's a born again rockabilly and Brooks isn't as dominant as he's been. This is a deeper sound and it's how Slammin' Gladys ought to sound throughout this album.

I feel a little bad giving this a 6/10 because I enjoyed Lose My Mind, loved Ice Water and liked Poison Arrow more and more the longer it ran. I'm sure I'd have a blast watching Slammin' Gladys live. Some songs here are weaker than others but none of them are bad. They just don't all sound as good as they should because of the mix. This ought to be a 7/10. But welcome back, folks!

Mission Control - Mission Control (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Funk Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

The problem with starting a day with the new Oranssi Pazuzu album is that I also have to find a way to follow it. The only way I could think of credibly doing that is to shift to something as wildly different as I could find and this funky jazz rock album fit the bill, while featuring cover art that in a less kawaii translation could actually describe Oranssi Pazuzu. Mission Control hail from New Jersey, a notably musical state but not one known for this style of music, unless I'm very much mistaken. This is their debut album.

It starts its mission to get our bodies moving in impeccable style, because it's impossible not to react physically to Conquest. I was bouncing in my office chair, which is as close as you want to see me to dancing. The whole song is the definition of perky, the keyboards of Ryan Gavin adding enough lightness that we'd be forgiven for being surprised when it ends and we're not floating around in the sky. I haven't heard a riff that funky on a soft rock song since the heyday of Herbie Hancock.

Mission Control, by Mission Control, from Mission Control, does much the same thing but with a bit more jaggedness, as if it wants us to do the robot. I got a Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe from the vocals, especially during the chorus, and the song is easily funky enough for them, but it still has at least one foot in the synthpop world of the eighties synth world. Out the Window almost sounds like Toto as a dance band, but the chorus almost sounds Dylan-esque. I'd be hearing the drums echoing in the night if only the drummers weren't too busy sipping margaritas on the beach. I guess this means that there are a lot of influences at play in this musical blender.

There are only six songs on offer, but it's not a short album at forty-two minutes. The average breaker is Moonfly, the seventeen minute jam that wraps up the album while never quite feeling like a jam, as this band are just so smooth. I got seriously caught up in this one, which only feels odd because I felt that a couple of the shorter songs, like the five minute Conquest and the six minute Out the Window might have been just a little longer than they should have been. The seventeen minute Moonfly? Nah, that one's good. Go figure.

Maybe part of it is that it sums up the rest of the album in one song. It's oddly perky and laid back, as Player 2 is, and the guitar/keyboard combo gets as melodious at points. It's an indie pop songwriting challenge, wanting us not just to move our feet but listen to the words that we never quite get round to doing, just like Commuter. It has the jazzy drumming of Kevin O'Neill, just like everything here, an abiding reminder that this is improvisational at heart, even if they wrote these songs and didn't just perform them. It has the funky bass of Mission Control, Sam Luba perhaps even more notable for that than his lead vocal.

But it also has time for a guitar solo and a sample and, before we know it, we've just lost a quarter of an hour in their jam. I didn't have a problem with Luba's vocals at any point here and they're easily a highlight of a song like Mission Control, but, when they show up sixteen minutes into Moonfly as the band decides to wrap things up, we're suddenly confused as to why they want to be a vocal group.

As a wannabe chart success, they should trim down their catchy as all get out songs like Conquest and Out the Window, so they can infect the airwaves like a virus. As a set of musicians, they should switch off the mike and just jam for an hour at a time. What makes them so good is that they can be great at both approaches. I eagerly await a second album!

Moon Cresta - Civil Fuzz Brigade (2019)

Country: Spain
Style: Psychedelic Funk/Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 22 Nov 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Here's something a little different: a Spanish psychedelic rock outfit named for a Japanese arcade game who lean very heavily on the funk. The only band on their influence list who aren't regulars on classic rock radio stations (Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, etc.) are the Raconteurs, a highly successful alternative rock band from Detroit in the late 2000s.

I can hear that sort of mix. Like those bands, Moon Cresta don't feel a need for every song to sound the same. There's a lot of invention here, as if the band are seriously exploring their musical influences rather than trying to sound like them. Yeah, I know, that should be a given but it's rare that it feels as obvious as this. A song like Misfortune Always Comes Again clearly comes from a Beatles mindset but there's a lot of Zeppelin in there too. I'd suggest there's more Zep on this album than anyone else even though the band only really sound derivative at points in No Time to Waste.

What surprises me about that list is the lack of more recent names. There's some Black Crowes in the opener, The Myth of the Rolling Rock, and Someone Has Put a Spell on You sounds like Lenny Kravitz with a fuzzy stoner guitar behind him. Here We Are has a rap vibe but it's never anything but funk, like Mike Patton guesting with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Mr. Know It All is the Beatles channelled through Extreme. Much of the fresh interpretation of old material is similar to what Saigon Kick did a couple of decades ago.

That recognisable Mike Patton vibe is all over Are You on Their Side? too, but the song feels more like a seventies song and not just because of a few Led Zep moments. I haven't enough background in American funk to be able to set up comparisons. Maybe I'll run this past my better half, who grew up in a time and space where that was everywhere and it became part of a musical baseline for her.

For me, this is a heady mix that gets headier. There's even some prog in the changes in No Time to Waste and that's a really weird thing because funk and prog tend to be more like opposite approaches than compatible ones. Suddenly the idea of funky prog makes sense. If I'm translating websites right, Moon Cresta go for "power funk", which makes sounds good to me. A lot of songs on this album could be hit pop songs, but they're generally much heavier than a mainstream audience is used to. Their debut album in 2006 was appropriately titled eROCKtile dysFUNKtion SOULution.

I've listened through Civil Fuzz Brigade a couple of times now and I'm sure that I'm going to playing it quite a lot more. I'm interested to see if any of the band members really start to leap out for special mention. Right now, beyond the vocals of Mr. D. that were always going to be a focus, this feels like a real band performance. Everyone's doing interesting things, often at the same time, but never in a way that steals attention from the rest of the band. Moon Cresta play deceptively loose but are actually really tight.

I'm not seeing a line-up history, but it looks like it's been consistent for a long time, with David, Mr. D., on keyboards as well as vocals; Manu "Doble L" on guitar and Antón F. "Piru" on bass. Manuel Ares is the new fish behind the drumkit, because it was Sergio "Sir" Puga on the last album, Moonary, in 2016. All of them deserve praise here as this feels like a real band rather than just a set of capable musicians playing in the same place.

I'll be listening to this more and looking for the earlier three albums (the other was 2010's The Sparkling Radio Stars and Their Lunatic Orchestra). At that slow release pace, that should keep me busy for a while until they get round to album five in another three or four years time.