steel, thick bass, accordion, Fender Rhodes piano, and horns you can imagine. This collection of tunes shows off elements beyond the collaborative unit's debut, Caveman Hughscore , especially sonic trickster Tucker Martine's drumming and production. Martine gives the mix a dub feel that manages to pile so much on top of the horns (from folks as renowned as fellow-Soft Machine vet Elton Dean and as underaccorded as Seattleite Craig Flory) that they just kind of wind out of the mix, making hang-dog solos around keyboards that twitter and pirouette and delight. --Andrew Bartlett  (less)

whirlwind tempos, the band is just as apt to toss a curve. Witness the South African township guitar introduction and interwoven fiddle theme to the continent-straddling title cut. "The Peacock" sports a 10/8 tempo, Balkan-flavored midsection purely for sport, while the two-part "The Bachelor" courts whimsy by kicking off the trad favorite "St. Kilda's Wedding" with a funky Fender bass riff. "The Pig" sits atop a 12-bar-blues structure, and "American Spire" tears up bluegrass inventor Bill Monroe's "Wheel Hoss" as a speed reel before dousing a homegrown reel in Kentucky moonshine. Even Bill Whelan of Riverdance fame gets Cuigged via an accordion and fiddle rendering of a theme from his ambitious Seville Suite in the first ...  (less)