{"id":810,"date":"2012-06-21T05:05:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T10:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=810"},"modified":"2012-06-21T05:05:41","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T10:05:41","slug":"album-review-the-sugarman-3-what-the-world-needs-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/21\/album-review-the-sugarman-3-what-the-world-needs-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Sugarman 3 – What the World Needs Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first caught notice of the (for lack of a better term) boogaloo revival a scant few years ago when I first heard The New Mastersounds<\/strong>. That group’s instrumental attack drew upon what the British call Northern Soul, folding in healthy helpings of Memphis style r&b a la<\/em> Booker T & the MG<\/strong>‘s. Once I got hip to (and interviewed<\/a>) them, I followed the trail where it led; I learned about the venerated DJ Keb Darge<\/strong><\/a>,curator of a long list of deep-groove collections. I found an actual (and quite wonderful) Memphis group, The City Champs<\/strong><\/a>. And of course everyone knows about Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings<\/strong>, and such modern practitioners of that classic soul r&b\/soul sound as Fitz & the Tantrums<\/strong> and Mayer Hawthorne<\/strong><\/a>. The wave continues with bubbling-under acts like The Right Now<\/strong><\/a>. In short, these are good times for soul\/funk\/r&b revival styles.<\/p>\n

It’s a given that the musicians who play this kind of music have a deep sense of history; it’s all but a prerequisite: if they lacked that depth, we’d detect the deficiency in the music and promptly call bullshit on them. So it’s perhaps not a surprise that both The City Champs’ guitarist Joe Restivo<\/strong> and The New Mastersounds’ Eddie Roberts<\/strong> both name-checked The Sugarman 3<\/strong> as favorites and big influences; that NYC trio was pretty much first on the revival scene.<\/p>\n

But the recording history of the group as such \u2013 namesake Neal Sugarman<\/strong> on sax, Adam Scone<\/strong> on organ, and drummer Rudy Albin<\/strong> \u2013 started in 1998 and ended four years later. They went on to back Sharon Jones, but as a recording unit, it seemed their days were over. Happily, this is not so.<\/p>\n

2012 saw the release of What the World Needs Now<\/em>, the first new release from The Sugarman 3 in a decade. And, as the saying goes, it’s like they never left. With the original lineup intact (or re-formed, depending on your point of view) and augmentation by familiar friends, What the World Needs Now<\/em> is a return to form, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Every bit as good as \u2013 and not very different from \u2013 their brief string of turn-of-the-century albums, the new set flies by quickly. In addition to the group originals (all of which deftly maintain that tight-yet-loose feel so essential to the style), The Sugarman 3 tackle a pair of noteworthy covers. The Standells<\/strong>‘ garage classic \u201cDirty Water\u201d gets a boogaloo reinvention here, and Burt Bacharach<\/strong>‘s classic (the title track) gets covered as well. The choice of the latter is remarkable in its own way: Bacharach’s songs are quite complex structures, and are already heavily imbued wit a jazz sensibility (if not outright jazz itself). So adapting a number like \u201cWhat the World Needs Now\u201d into an irresistibly danceable style is tougher than it might seem; the primitive \u201cDirty Water\u201d is a more logical (and easier-to-pull-off) choice. The thing is, in the expert hands of The Sugarman 3, both work, and well.<\/p>\n

From the retro-styled cover art to the recording aesthetic (8-track analog, mixed to bright and glorious mono) to the arrangements, this is one album that engages in truth in packaging: it really is What the World Needs Now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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I first caught notice of the (for lack of a better term) boogaloo revival a scant few years ago when I first heard The New Mastersounds. That group’s instrumental attack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}