The Svelteness of Boogietude

'Those who know know', as my Sensei once said many years ago. Those who know that a new release from Brother JT is not to be missed are either wise, lucky, or both. Back with his first 'official' release since 2008's excellent JELLY ROLL GOSPEL, the Brother is still flowing, still changing, and still getting better. The 'influences' here are simply too many to mention and they are all rendered somewhat irrelevant by the Sui Generis nature of JT's sound. To say that this music is influenced by Glam Rock or George Clinton or the Velvets is no more informative than saying that Captain Beefheart was influenced by Howlin' Wolf. In the end, neither man sounds anything like anybody but himself.When he is copping a riff, the Brother always tells you- in this case we get 'TRex Blues', with a guitar riff that is a modified Jeepster, yet the song sounds nothing at all like TRex, proving once again that in Rock and Roll, unlike Classical Music, the notes don't mean crap- it's the Sound that matters. The sonic palette here is quite wide, from shimmering and acoustic to bludgeon to disturbingly bent feedback and drone, yet the whole thing coheres and flows so as to be absolutely unified. Like a good Taoist JT somehow just naturally avoids the pitfalls of either irony or earnestness, standing instead on the Soulful and Holy ground of just being himself in the moment.If forced at gunpoint to describe this album in 'review-ese' the best I could do would be to say that (some of it) is like Glam-Rock grungified, blasted with a firehouse, and infused with Soul- Psychedelicized Soul, of course! There are several songs here with faint melodic echoes of vintage Roxy Music, but JT's sound is so fundamentally different as to make that irrelevant. The strongest tracks to my mind are the thoroughly mind altering 'Muffintop', 'Many Man Smoke' and 'I Still Like Cassettes', which feature a slightly frightening warped blue psychedelia, while JT's guitar, note-bending and feedback drenched, threatens to wring your cerebellum like a twisted wet towel.I suppose some mention of the lyrics would be in order. The words are a topic unto themselves. With Don Van Vliet is his grave, there isn't really much competition for JT when it comes to writing surrealist/absurdist rock and roll songs. As always he avoids both banality and pretense with his effortless stream of consciousness rhymes, chock full of sex and death, Lewis Carrol copping the dirtiest parts of Joyce's Ulysses, groaning for some mercy and some 'muffintop'.While media-hyped flavor-of-the-month artists like Kurt Vile may be grabbing more headlines, JT is, as always, delivering the goods. The proof of the pudding for me is that 'The Sveltness Of Boogietude' sounds better with each listen- even the relatively simple and seemingly silly 'Sweatpants' proves to have surprising depth on repeated listens. This ain't no 'Product', it's the real thing, and that's hard to find these days.

Excellent seller. Quick service, item as described. A++

The Svelteness of Boogietude strikes the perfect balance between goofiness and psych-pop earworms. Brother JT has been at it for the last 20 years or so with many bands. At this point, he has perfected his brand of fractal pan-opti classic rock -- re-combining all of the eras of psychedelia into his own world. To get a good feel for the Brother's sense of humor, take a look at his hilarious web-series, Trippin' Balls with Brother JT or the video for Sweatpants.