Dr. John, Tribal
Featured Album
A greasy, grimy, gritty example of the Southern gothic sublime
Dr. John (aka Mac Rebennack) comes full circle on Tribal, fusing the New Orleans voodoo funk of his brilliant 1968 debut, Gris-Gris, with the pissed-off political provocations of his 2008 post-Katrina manifesto, The City That Care Forgot. Tribal also offers a grooving sampler of Crescent City sounds, especially in its particularly tasty top half. Something subtly surprising starts to happen four songs in: Beginning with R&B legend Allen Toussaint's new "Change of Heart" and culminating in "Manoovas," Rebennack uses four cranky-yet-funky love songs, all perhaps inspired by a single "hard-kicking bee-otch," to reflect the spiritual world's spin on everyday life in his neck of Louisiana. Rebennack muses just as pungently on current events, too. "Big Gap," measures that "mighty big gap between the rich and the poor," while "Only in Amerika" (with that klaxon of a K) questions Louisiana's record-setting prison population. And "Whut's Wit Dat," possibly the funkiest song about nutrition ever tracked, begins with the sobering observation that, "If you're eatin' white bread, you're walkin' with the dead." Dr. John plays both organ and piano throughout Tribal, giving it a meat-and-potatoes gospel push. But the album's real marvel is, as usual, that amazing voice, a greasy, grimy, gritty example of the Southern gothic sublime.
