Brother JT, The Svelteness of Boogietude
Featured Album
John Terlesky's craftiest album since breaking up the Original Sins in the early '90s
T. Rex goes P-Funk — or maybe Ween goes Bevis Frond — throughout much of Pennsylvania psych-pop do-it-yourselfer John Terlesky’s craftiest album since breaking up the Original Sins in the early ’90s. Funky drum machine, squiggly synth lines, distorted vocals and sustained fuzzy guitars provide the bedrock for some pretty witty wordplay. Things begin to get weird with “Muffintop,” a slow-groove paean to fleshy surplus; JT returns to this topic a few tracks later in “Sweatpants,” a Zappa-esque slice of TMI-electrofunk that declares, “Life is hard enough, you need some wiggle room.” Brother JT also lays it on the line in the lysergic existentialism of “Be A” (“Be an anchor, be Ravi Shankar, be a tanker spillin’ love”) and the choogling “Things I Like” (“Pretty eyes disarming me, high and lonesome harmony”). Insinuatingly nostalgic in an early-Bowie kind of way, “I Still Like Cassettes” pretty much serves as Brother JT’s aesthetic credo while explaining how a 40-something Pennsylvanian might “really missss all the hissss” of an outmoded technology. Heads up, however, ’cause “here come the drop-outs!”
