And you thought it was just The Flying Hats who were equally into early reggae and The Meters. Actually, you didn’t did you (?) because you’ve already had a number of singles off The Appetizers’ Keep Your Step long player by way of – er – appetizers (including Make It Reggay and The Life) for the main course. Well, here Keep Your Step is, with the band dropping a set twelve tracks deep (fourteen if you cop the digital), featuring both singles, that delivers early reggae and rocksteady through a funk-soul lens.
One of the funkiest cuts on the album is the band’s reggae take on The Meters’ A Message From The Meters which makes the reggae suitably funky and squelchy in a way that once more shows not just the debt owed by funk and soul music to New Orleans’ finest but also how far that funky message reaches across genre boundaries. Also super funky is the start of Make It Reggay which literally uses a funk rhythm, nodding to Charles Wright & The 103rd St Watts Rhythm Band’s What Can You Bring Me for eight bars then dropping in the Hammond for a few more before the band switches with big fanfare to an early reggae riddim. Elsewhere, Thicker Than Water is almost mid-seventies-Wailers-ish while Catch This is rather more Jackie Mittoo-ish. If the Mittoo Hammond-influences are your thing you’ll especially dig the Hammond-led rocksteady of Fussy Girl and a duo of groovers that close the vinyl version of the album – the super sweet Stormy Weather and monkey favourite the lilting We Shall Overcome. Mastered by JJ Golden whose work has previously included Black Pumas, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Jr. Thomas & The Volcanos and The Frightnrs, this one is well worth checking out. The digital comes with two additional vocal cuts in the form of good time nuggets Get Some Rollin’ and Swing And Sway.
(Out now on Killer Groove Records)