KOOL ADE ACID TEST - Geraldine Penny

11 songs
42:55 minutes
***** ****
Hazelwood / Soulfood

Bandpage

Some music is too colourful to be described, and gives the reviewer a really hard time, and in this case also a bad conscience. Two fifth of Kool Ade Acid Test - Steven Gaeta and Steve Moss - used to play in the legendary fake jazz band Universal Congress Of, that was in the late Eighties and early Nineties where I wasted my life listening to heavy metal. Shame on me. Now being older, I have sometimes trouble finding the right words describing what I hear now, as this is far from what I grew up with.

Geraldine Penny is already this German-American quintet's third album, and the fact that the album has about a dozen guest musicians , among others their label mates Mardi Gras.BB, guarantees an eclectic atmosphere that you normally only find with Mr Bungle side projects. The roots are definitely jazz and bop music, but the main ingredient is smart funk, with a lot of mellow psychedelia à la late Sixties Beatles and a lot of twisted humour. If you are mostly into hard stuff music, you might have a hard time with Kool Ade Acid Test, but the castrative charm of Ms. Peaches or the mushroomy Lesbian Girls will get you with their naive charm. The closing track, Trinkle Water, even manages to combine with reggae and carnival marching band music the most unlikely ingredients.

The band name, in reference to Tom Wolfe's legendary report of the Sixties, shows that these guys have seen some weird shit in their lives, and their aural excesses make it possible for us to be a part of that, for which I am grateful. There are few, if any, albums right now that are that colourful.