Critters Buggin’

Host (Loosegroove)
by Lex Marburger

Primus meets Praxis. That is, Herb drums and Zorn sax with some Bootsy bass and Larry guitar, and some vocal samples thrown in for good measure. Yes, I know the name sucks, but the music is actually pretty good. There’s a little Soul Coughing influence here too, but only so far as the bass and drums sometimes lay down some deep funk grooves. More often than not, the drums go off on wild solos/fills, which make me look at the liner notes… Yep, the drummer, Matt Chamberlain, gets the majority of writing credit on Host. It’s good to hear that kind of freedom these days when loops and repetitive grooves are dominating the airwaves. Yeah, I like Kraftwerk too, but you need some improv every once in a while, too. This must be a fun band to play in. There’re hardly any rules, and they seem to be enjoying themselves far too much. But they’re no joke band. Not by a long shot, never mind the name. Most joke/art funk/noise bands (Eskimo comes to mind) are fun to listen to for a while, but soon grow stale as you hear them struggling to place the art in the joke. Critters Buggin’ (ugh, I’m going to avoid writing that as much as possible) aren’t joking. They’re obviously writing difficult music that sounds fun. They’re not struggling for anything. They don’t want you to laugh, they don’t want you to ponder, they just want you to listen. It’s a subtle difference, there in the realms of Music College training and honesty (two things that rarely coincide), a difference between consciously making adventuresome music with ties to contemporary styles (which usually ends up trying too hard one way or another, and believe me,it shows) and music made by people who are so freaked out that the music is inevitable. Host is another fine rest stop on the road to extreme left field music. Now if they’d only change their name.