It's kind of difficult to describe what kind of music
the Menahan Street Band
make, although the ten tracks (there's also an unlisted 11th track) presented on this debut album share a certain pleasant, easy, and sunny vibe. All are unhurried instrumentals, and while it's tempting to call this stuff
soul
, it isn't that exactly. There's a
jazz
feel here, too, but it isn't exactly
soul-jazz
, either, and then there's a certain intangible Jamaican
dub
feel to how things are mixed, but one can't really call it
, and while things get lightly funky now and then, it isn't
funk
. A loose-knit group of musicians drawn from
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
(
Dave Guy
,
Homer Steinweiss
Fernando Velez
Bosco Mann
),
El Michels Affair
Leon Michels
Toby Pazner
Antibalas
Nick Movshon
Aaron Johnson
), and
the Budos Band
Mike Deller
Daniel Foder
recorded these tracks with producer
Thomas Brenneck
in his Menahan Street apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and if it's difficult to put a finger on what their sound should be labeled, it's not difficult to like it. Tracks like
"Karina"
and
"The Traitor"
have gently hypnotic and shifting grooves that have just enough nervous energy to stay interesting. Nothing here is going to set the world on fire but nothing here is going to make the world a worse place, either. The perfect Sunday morning listen. ~ Steve Leggett