Soul Coughing – Ruby Vroom

If “Screenwriter’s Blues” were the only song I ever heard from this band—it was the first song I heard from this band—they would still go down as one of the greatest, most compelling, most unique, most innovative acts to land in my headphones in decades.

Funk, jazz, hip-hop, house, rap, techno, rock, blues, soul, folk, spoken word, slam, be-bop … what ISN’T in here?

And yet, it’s totally unified. There IS no genre hopping. Every song contains within it ALL these influences. It’s Jack Kerouac meets Gil-Scott Heron at the mic, with Portishead’s DJ working alongside The Gap Band’s rhythm section, performing the soundtrack to a film noir that Bob Dylan scored, as produced by The Bomb Squad.

It’s of course NOT that. Because that never happened. But if you wish that DID happen, then get this album. Cuz that’s pretty much what it’s like.

Vocalist/lyricist Mike Doughty described it “deep slacker jazz.”

Recommended track to start with: Screenwriter’s Blues

I am going to

Los Angeles

to see my own

name on a

screen, five feet

long and luminous

as the radioman says

it is 5 am

and the sun has charred

the other side of

the world and come

back to us

and painted the smoke

over our heads

an imperial violet

it is 5 am

and you are listening

to Los Angeles.