Kingsley Flood looks inward on ‘Another Other’
Kingsley Flood has a good problem to deal with. The Boston-born band puts on such epic, intimate and unhinged live shows, people can overlook their albums. The deeply personal and introspective nature of their new LP, “Another Other,” should change that.
The roots rock band has made smart, tight records in the past — “Battles” was my favorite release of 2013. But on “Another Other,” frontman/songwriter Naseem Khuri stares squarely at how his suburban Westwood, second-generation Palestinian-American experience shaped his life. Sometimes he was a rich kid on the right side of the tracks; other times, he was Middle Eastern, drawing suspicious glances for his skin color.
The ugly, throbbing, feedback-filled opening track “The Bridge” examines the span between a wealthy suburb and a crumbling city. The honky-tonk tune “Good Old Wind” looks at the world from the vantage of a bigot running a dying convenience store. Over a dub bass line, creepy keyboards and big horns, the title track finds its narrator of Arabic descent in a bar on a Friday night as news of a terrorist bombing breaks.
But because Khuri has just the right amount of Springsteen and Dylan to his craft, the album is filled with plenty of other “others.” He’s populated the disc with crooked politicians, desperate couples declining past middle age and revolutionaries who die in foreign lands. Every turn comes with something special: a ’70s punk crescendo, a bit of Britpop, a dusty, Western country melody.
Obviously, you need to see Kingsley Flood celebrate the album live at The Sinclair on Nov. 18. But don’t forget to actually pick up the album, the one so good you’ll forget for a moment that Kingsley Flood made its name conquering club stages.
People tend to think of second line bands — brass bands steeped in New Orleans traditions — as instant party starters. It’s a great compliment, maybe the best compliment ever, but it limits the sonic and emotional range of these bands. Revolutionary Snake
Ensemble can absolutely get a party started. But on the local horn collective’s fourth album, “I Want That Sound!,” the players also explore the wild outerlands of jazz. Leader and alto saxophone player Ken Field, who wrote seven of the eight tunes here, loves to add odd harmonic turns to his funky grooves. (Listen to “Discoveries.”) Sometimes he skips the groove altogether: “Higgins Hollow” follows the shaking of a gris-gris bag (something that’s half percussion instrument, half voodoo talisman) into an eerie mess of crisscrossing horn lines.
Come out and join the band for its “I Want That Sound!” record release party, with fellow New Orleans interpreters Soggy Po Boys, Nov. 4 at Once in Somerville.
Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz is a huge Rolling Stones fan (so much so, he’s penned two books on the band). But I’ve always wondered where he hid his Stones influence in Buffalo Tom — a great-if-straight-alt-rock outfit. On his first LP with The Needy Sons, “Vis-A-Vis,” he puts his Mick and Keef fetish on display.
Teamed with The Figgs’ Mike Gent (who wrote half the tracks), bassist Ed Valauskas and drummer Eric Anderson, Janovitz sounds loose, gritty and even sloppy at times (I mean this as high praise). He opens the record with the ringing, feedback-heavy “Lost Against the Twilight,” which could almost be a new wave track for the Lizard Lounge crowd. But with “Red Line” and “Roll Call,” he gets down to the dirty work of roadhouse rock.
Gent counterpunches with his own English influences (he’s always seemed more Kinks than Stones). Drawing a Venn diagram, he fits “Too Thin” in the overlap between power pop and vintage British invasion. What begins as a thumping drone, “Majoring in Slow” blooms with a big, bright chorus and some cool Cars keyboards.
The Needy Sons celebrate “Vis-A-Vis” with a party at Q Division studio on Nov. 11.