Drums & Tuba "Mostly Ape"

There's a certain economy in Drum and Tuba's name; unlike a regular band, you know what you're going to get from the get-go. If neither drum nor tuba were present, then you'd certainly feel ripped-off. As a result, you can't help but feel that Drums & Tuba had better deliver the goods. Thankfully, they do. Mostly Ape, their second album for esteemed eclectic label Righteous Babe, finds the band moving further away from their early, math-rock novelty act and forging a tight, can't be beat sound.

There's not a single moment on Mostly Ape that reeks of math, and that's a great thing. Theirs is a drumhead-tight jazz-rock/funk sound that will quickly pull you in, and their music never ever sounds like a quirky novelty act. While the tuba is prominent throughout, it's never quite the heavy imposition on the songs as you'd probably think. In some songs, such as "Air Con Dec" and the guitar-funky "The Metrics," you never actually think about the tuba, as it simply folds in nicely with the bass line.

Oh my, there I go, talkin' about technical things, and avoidin' the feelings that Drums and Tuba give off. Mostly Ape is a very warm record; at times, you can feel their presence in the room; if you've seen them live, then you know that they can totally draw you in with their friendly, funky sound. You can bounce a nickel off of their tightness, and even though they're becoming well talked-about in the nouveau-hippie jam-band scene, it's comforting to know that for once those folk have it right, becaus Drums and Tuba are an awesome live act.

Perhaps their sudden tightness comes from their recent obsession with touring; if you squint when you look at the inside of Mostly Ape, you'll see a very, very long list of dates for the past sixteen months. Mostly Ape feels like a live show, and that's probably due to the fact that the album was recorded in one week with, according to the notes, "a bare minimum of overdubs." I've seen them twice over the past two years, and both times, they took the ideas that make up Mostly Ape and their previous work, Vinyl Killers, and improvised from them, creating new sounds that were different and new, yet warmly familiar. It was great, because they simply carried on and on and simply jammed for two hours. Mostly Ape sounds a lot like those shows, it's true, and the only thing missing from the album's live feel is Goat in the corner, gettin' into the groove.

--Joseph Kyle