A crazy establishment we’ve got on our hands here. A band founded by chance by workplace colleagues who found out by accident that they have a number of shared musical interests, started jamming, recorded their songs in a matter of weeks in a garage somewhere in LA, and in the span of 3 years, managed to record 12 songs and compile them in an album that’s an absolute epitome of genre-defying groovy, garage funk rock awesomeness.
Meet Saucy Posse. Starting with the name, it’s easy to see that eccentricity admirably flows within these guys’ identities, wait till you hear the music. Hailing from Los Angeles, they refuse to be labeled with a specific genre or color, and it’s also easy to see that they borrow a lot from a lot of places, with significant traces of punk, funk, jazz, and rock, and it’s crazy how they manage to squeeze all of these within the confines of simple, garage-recorded, 3-minute songs… consistently. Another consistency is the light-heartedness. This is a band with an extraordinary prowess, managing to squeeze fat, full and satisfying sounds from the meager setup of bass, drums, and a couple of guitars (mostly just one guitar) along with Dallin Nelson’s amazing singing and attention-grabbing lyrics. It’s actually very hard to pin down what exactly about these songs that makes them work out so well, mostly because they are all boiled down to exactly what’s needed? Maybe it’s the fresh humor and careless attitude? The amazing stories? The inventive arrangements? The general diligence and sonic cohesion? I say it’s a combination of all of that.
Every song is a joy on its own, but certain highlights really do make this album for me. The opener 5 O’clock features one of the freshest rhythms I’ve heard in a long time, so simple and so effective. Very melodic and frenetic verses blend into funky instrumental breakdowns with hot bass riffage. The bass riffage is generally hot and consistently so throughout the album. Case in point is just the next song over, Break Your Heart is one of the bluesiest songs with an immensely danceable groove, with a thick bass riff keeping it all fresh and solid. Stay At Home Mom is jumpy and catchy. The mid-section is astonishingly well-crafted as if veers away from the main body of the song with an ambient, brushed, clean guitar riff, and choir vocals, two things that feature only on this song. How that section blends right back into the song and how the song abruptly vanishes are pure joy. Sewer People is the first song the band recorded together, and it’s a perfect indication of the immense talents at hand. The main riff is a sizzling hot groove. Absolutely solid, sexy, and minimal. The attitude of how the few notes are intensely picked on the guitars makes as much of the riff as the notes themselves. And the lyrics are delightfully dark and eye-opening.
In My Mind is more melodic than average. A tremolo-picked guitar medley starts, sounding like a solo, and is swiftly pushed to the back as we find out that it’s an incredibly smart rhythm part for the actual solo, which was a very fresh and unexpected trick. Bring The Break sees the band channel their true modest mouses to the table with melodic guitars and group vocals, and Take My Heart is a summery tune with a refreshing riff and impressive range on the vocals. Milton Power in another highlight, with an incredibly detailed story and very detailed songwriting and performances to match, the music ebbs and flows as the story unfolds making the foray sound like a tiny drama. The finishing track, Poop Deck, is anything but poop. With a very bright bass part that builds the backbone of the piece, a whistling solo is a sweet way to end the record.
Dallin Nelson, Ty Bonaventura & Kritika Malhotra have managed to craft a fun, lighthearted and ingenious record, mainly by sticking to what sounds good to them and what allows them to have fun. The result is 44 minutes of crazy creative music that’s equally eccentric, lo-fi, inventive, cohesive… and fun.
