Thank You Very Quickly

Extra Golden’s first two offerings were exciting, wildly successful experiments in integration and transcultural music-making. OK-Oyot System, released in 2006, was an honest and ear-opening attempt at integrating a pair of American rockers and a pair of Kenyan benga musicians, and the two halves merged well, utilizing various African folk styles and the looser feel of American indie rock. Hera Ma Nono brought some lineup changes and a very successful attempt at tightening up the groove quotient, while not necessarily expanding the palette. The seam between rock and benga was still audible. Not so on Thank You Very Quickly. The basic tracks to these six songs were recorded in the laundry room of Ian Eagleson’s parents’ house and added to over the next couple of months. What has been achieved here is an utterly seamless meld of tough, tight grooves; enchanting vocals; entrancing rockist guitar stylings; and shifting, click-clacking taut rhythmic energy. Eagleson(bass, organ, and guitars), Alex Minoff (bass and guitars), Onyango Wuod Omari (drums, percussion, and vocals), and Otieno Jagwasi (lead vocals) have integrated the various elements of benga, rock, and even American-styled funk into a whole that radiates killer dance music that is as infectious as it is substantial. The set opens with “Gimakiny Akia,” the hardest-rocking tune the group has cut yet. Its popping bassline and distorted mid-fi guitars are pure rock & roll glory inspired in equal parts by the Meat Puppets circa II and by Jerry Garcia! Add to this a Farfisa organ and the effect is nearly complete — but when one considers the pulse vocals of Jagwasi and the skittering, circular drumming and stuttering breakbeats by Omari, the tune becomes some utterly irresistible anthem of joy. That said, “Ukimwi,” with gorgeous, sweet, lead vocals by Omari, is a folk song with spacy synth effects, and is an impassioned plea for more compassion and understanding regarding the crisis of AIDS and its toll on the African continent. The title track, which closes the set, is a driving, finger-popping, ass-shaking dancefloor monster that is more somber lyrically in that it details, in both languages, the tragedy of the current political situation in Kenya. Thank You Very Quickly is that rare thing in popular music as well as indie: that a band sticks it out long enough to find, among the various elements of its individuals, a real musical synthesis that creates a sound that is so much bigger than the sum of its parts. Extra Golden are no longer an excellent experiment; their music now reflects the beautiful truth of total collaboration. – Thom Jurek