The Playback: March 2025

There’s atmospheric, and then there’s Bowery Electric’s Lushlife. In their third and final full-length LP, the New York City duo deliver one of the turn of the century’s most sinister and entrancing takes on trip hop.

It’s gutsy for a New York group to drop a track called "Shook Ones." On Lushlife, Bowery Electric have the menacing sound to back up the homage. Martha Schwendener’s beckoning vocals provoke an uneasy calm as they float above dusty drum loops, while Lawrence Chandler’s creeping guitar leads add to the tension. There’s also discomfort in the record’s unpredictability, as discordant phrases jump out of the mix in moments of stasis.

Lurking in the sonic hypnosis, however, is a thematically rich collection of lyrics. Through scant, enigmatic verses, Schwendener and Chandler explore spiritual motifs and lay down hard-hitting social commentary, especially on the anti-war “Freedom Fighter.”

After Lushlife, Bowery Electric disappeared. In the 25 years since their last release, the influential duo has hardly registered a decibel in the music scene. Chandler had a short-lived attempt at a comeback over a decade ago, and Schwendener has maintained radio silence. Lushlife’s foreboding frigidity is the soundtrack of their retreat into the unknown.

If the social commentary on Lushlife is a wake-up call, then Situationist Comedy is an industrial-grade siren. The Minneapolis icons’ third effort marries melody and mockery in a blistering half hour that embodies the punk ethos to perfection.

Any good hardcore record has a satirical voice. On Situationist Comedy, songwriting partners Erik Funk and Patrick Costello are downright cutting. Together, they paint a bleak picture of early 2000s America, sneering at cold-blooded corporations and suburban malaise. The most biting remarks are saved for the music industry, however, as “New Punk Fashions For the Spring Formal.” closes the album with a venomous jab at commercial punk bands.

The band’s performances accentuate the urgency of their messaging. Each song has a sense of controlled chaos, managing melodic appeal amidst scuzzy guitar leads and frantic rhythms. Funk and Costello add yet another dynamic layer with their alternating vocal lines, as Funk’s grainy whine contrasts effectively with Costello’s gruff delivery. Just by virtue of engineering something so rough around the edges, Dillinger Four reinforce their rebuke of sanitized punk.

Fat Wreck Chords (pronounced “records”) released a lot of game-changing hardcore projects. Even alongside some of the greatest punk albums of the era, Situationist Comedy stands out as especially critically inclined. Despite being penned nearly 25 years ago, sentiments like “simple arguments now accusations of dissent” are hauntingly relevant today. Records like this are reminders that the punk attitude is both timeless and indispensable.

By 1992, the audience for jangly dream pop was thinning. Riverside had just signed to Sire Records, a label famous for pushing the envelope. The Philly upstarts took a different path, devoting their debut album to the sound that defined Britain’s alternative scene in the late 80s. The product is 39 minutes of pure ecstasy.

One’s endless energy is anchored by its instantly catchy guitar parts. Keith Kochanowicz and Kenneth Jackson play with exceptional chemistry, simultaneously evoking melancholy and euphoria with their layered melodies. Kochanowicz also serves as the lead singer, delivering a series of incredible hooks highlighted by the infectiously rhythmic “Mansfield Park.” The band’s cohesion extends to drummer Jonathan Liney, who provides the perfect accents with timely fills and crash hits.

All of the air-tight performances on One are filtered through a haze of dreamy effects that give the record a surreal finish. The songwriting follows suit, journeying through a mist of vague images to complete the aesthetic.

Describing One’s critical reception is difficult because there wasn’t one. The album flopped hard, and Sire dropped Riverside shortly thereafter. The band independently released their next album in 1994 and waited 24 years to drop a follow-up, both of which died on arrival. Even as ‘80s indie sounds undergo revival after revival, nobody seems to be digging deep enough in Sire’s catalog to find Riverside. That’s what bored college students are for.

Hip hop doesn’t get any slicker than this. Working with the budget of an Orlando label credited with just two releases, The Ballers managed to put together one of the most expensive-sounding G-Funk projects of the genre’s most prolific era.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short is everything a G-Funk album should be. Toneye Brown and company ooze charisma on the mic, flowing effortlessly through vignettes of the hustler lifestyle. There’s a rare self-awareness to their bars as well, as the crew spends multiple tracks contemplating the consequences of their habits. A slew of backing vocalists drop in to make each track sparkle with soulful flavor, delivering earworm choruses that are as luscious as they are sticky.

Neither the swank nor the soul of A Day Late would be nearly as sensuous without the record’s pristine production. Engineered by Brown and a deep cast of co-producers, the arrangements are heavy on lustrous grooves anchored by G-Funk staples like fat boom-bap drums and sharp synth lines. Glinting embellishments give the instrumentals regional identity, as sampled sax and Rhodes’ Piano chords provide glitz and gloss that scream South Florida.

The Ballers are one of just a few Florida hip hop groups to drop anything memorable in the 90s. During the first great era of hip hop in the South, most of the buzz was reserved for burgeoning scenes in Atlanta, Memphis and Houston, with each locality producing unique takes on established genres. With A Day Late and a Dollar Short, The Ballers give a glimpse into what could have been if G-Funk took off in Florida the way it did on the West Coast.

Mind Transplant is a musical explosion. Over the course of eight mind-bending tracks, legendary session drummer Alphonse Mouzon leads a who’s who of ‘70s virtuosos to jazz-fusion Nirvana.

By the mid-70s, jazz had been pushed to its absolute limit. Artists at the forefront of the genre were abandoning structure, reinventing instrumental palettes and experimenting with atonality. Mind Transplant combines similarly awe-inspiring complexity with pop-oriented sensibilities to create something demanding yet approachable.

The record’s crossover appeal is rooted in its feature list. The three guitarists bring the most eye-popping pedigrees, as Deep Purple’s Tommy Bolin is joined by Lee Ritenour and Jay Graydon, both of whom appear on Steely Dan’s Aja. Mouzon’s partner in the rhythm section is bassist Henry Davis, who threw down funky bass lines for Marvin Gaye and Herbie Hancock after working on Mind Transplant.

With Mouzon at the helm, the hired guns shred their way through dense arrangements, tearing into electrifying solos along the way. The bandleader still manages to steal the spotlight, however, taking propulsion to the next level with rhythms that are as precise as they are lightning-fast. Mouzon balances the intensity of the album’s all-out scorchers by including a couple pieces that are much more reflective by comparison. “Golden Rainbows” is the most immersive of all, marinating in its groove for seven intoxicating minutes.

Despite only featuring one song over five minutes and being tonally comparable to music jazz purists might deem unimaginative, Mind Transplant still succeeds in embodying the spirit of jazz. Mouzon packs every second with as much energy as possible, leading to an album whose 33-minute runtime feels meager against the sprawling instrumental expeditions it contains.