Pinkeye d'Gekko - Rhythm & Western

Funky violins. Rap-scat guitars. Slinky Cake-esque spoken lyrics. Boogie bass. If the bayou had a bastard child, it'd be S.R. Mahoney. He takes blues licks and makes them prance, he takes waltzes and throws snarly lyrics on top of them to make the "shoo-bops" less friendly ("Galore"), and you like it. It's like Wierd Al cloned his ability to imitate then fused it with a really talented bunch of musicians. Then Jimmy Buffet fed them cheeseburgers and everyone had a good time. It's almost as fun as animated strutting alley cats. The sweet- "we'll just curl up and hope we're never found"- and silly (we use a bird as a vehicle for narration) "Inside Job" is as lovely as it is eccentric, while the eccentric crown goes to "Set Pounds" which is a 22 second, sweeping ode to the ooh and the ahh. And everything gets really operatic, narrative, and cool in "Kindess?", where there's some genuine old-fashioned guitar lick playing going on. The only points I take off of Rhthym and Western is the jazzish-bloat cover of Bob Dylan's "Most of the Time," one of the most tender and crystalline songs the dude ever wrote. But kudos to the slide guitar. In short, Pinkeye d'Gekko has the best jump, jive, and wail I've heard on an album in a long time, so if you're into trumpets and saxaphones behind you, then you got it made with the gekko. [www.pinkeyedgekko.com]