It must have slipped my notice, but at about 10:30 pm on Friday night in Northampton, after having listened to two front bands for an hour and a half, I looked around and realized that Pearl Street Night Club was stuffed with people and their energy had begun bubbling out onto the street. This has been a busy year for Rubblebucket Orchestra and they have been touring constantly and promoting their soon-to-be released third album Came Out of a Lady on April 29th.
Pearl Street has a dark, closed-in, underground feel to it. It’s a small and tight space and if one really needed to sit and take a breather, the seating consists of a couple steps and a railing that separates the main floor and the bar area, but for a band that’s in the business of making its audience members “dance hard, sweat, feel warm and maybe even happy” as said by the Rubblebucket Orchestra themselves, a standing-room only venue forces that kind of audience reception. It’s just that an eight-member orchestra that utilizes brass, woodwind, vocals, electric guitar, bass, drums, the West African n’goni lute AND afro-beat instruments such as the shekere gourd and claves is simply too grand and majestic for the crammed and tiny stage that Pearl Street had to offer.
As the concert progressed non-stop from 10:30 to 12:30 in the morning, I leafed through my mind trying to generate the right words to describe the genre of music being played, but by the end of the show, all I was able to jot down was, “60s ‘Chicago’ instrumentation meets ‘M.I.A.’s’ vocals on ‘Kabukimono’s’ Rainbow Arabia” or “‘Sly and the Family Stone’ meets 80s ‘Talking Heads’ meets ‘Fela Kuti and the Africa 70 band’”.
My literary tossing and turning demonstrates just how hard it is to define the massive mix of genres that Rubblebucket Orchestra brings to the table. The most striking aspect of the group’s indefinable sound is that most of the songs in their set individually displayed a hodgepodge of styles involving exuberant horn playing, percussive density including West African ostinatos, Afro-Cuban polyrhythm and good ol’ fashioned drum kit rock beats as well as unobtrusive guitar and bass riffing.
The group comes from Burlington, Brooklyn and Boston (a.k.a. Ver-brook-ston) and is fronted by vocalist/saxophonist Kalmia Traver and vocalist/trumpetist Alex Toth, and featuring Craig Myers on percussion who studied and taught West African music abroad before joining the group and there’s also Darby Wolf on keyboard who lives nearby in Amherst.
The set consisted of older tracks such as the n’goni lute infused “Kuma” from their 2008 Rose’s Dream and, from their sophomore self-titled LP Rubblebucket, the trip-hoppy anthem of “Landing”, the dreamy beat and sauntering and sensual bass, sax and horns of “Don’t Exaggerate” and the widely favorite tune “Bikes” which, out of a leisurely intro, builds into a deep, down and groovy funk mix. And, ever so cruelly, the group kept us waiting in eager anticipation for their new single, “Came Out of a Lady” which they surprise performed at the end of the night and that, not surprisingly, led the fans into a frenzy of jumping up and down, waving hands, lighters, cell phones, even a flashy glow-in-the-dark weed bong and shouting such phrases as “IT’S A LOVE REVOLUTION BABY!”
As the young woman swaying next to me, wearing 60s hippie regalia, over-sized hipster sunglasses, punk Dr.Marten boots and black nail polish, I saw her as a representation of the night’s musical environment and why Rubblebucket is such a catch. Versatility. Versatility because Rubblebucket can slip on and shed off a plethora of genres in their music and sound excellent doing so, a testament to the young generation’s access to explore any music style, feeling and era they desire and the agency given to them to produce, master and expand on it.
Rubblebucket Orchestra, Pearl Street Night Club,
Northampton, MA. 04/16/10
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