The Budos Band
Brooklyn Bowl
Brooklyn, NY
March 27
The Budos Band, the group that was introduced to me with the words “they’re good—they sound like the soundtrack to a ‘70s cop show,” have recently taken a step away from being relegated to so simple an allusion. Not that the original endorsement was meant to question the quality of the band or be dismissive of their sound—I mean, those theme songs could get pretty damn funky (I’m looking at you, SWAT), and I don’t think anyone would argue when I say that the Budos guys could do a really top notch cover of the Hawaii Five-O opening. But with their last studio effort, Burnt Offering, this horn-centered, Afro-funk orchestra broke free of conventional labels, delivering a dark, psychedelic, foreboding album that may be their best stuff yet. On March 27, the Staten Island-based ensemble brought their newly-vamped sound across the river to the Brooklyn Bowl, filling the stage with a sinister mixture of sweat, beer and dirty funk.

From the start of the show, it was obvious that baritone sax player Jared Tankel was in control of the musical direction. Whenever a song was about to go to a new section, the horn player raised his fist to assure that the rest of the guys were on the same page. It’s not surprising that a collection of eight musicians fully ensconced in their groove would benefit from a single director giving them cues, but it also points to one of the greatest parts of this kind of live music.

Watching a group like this play in person is like getting invited to a private jam session. While there are a lot of bands that have great stage chemistry and can communicate almost wordlessly, there’s something intimate about actually seeing physical proof that the band doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen next. They’re open to stretching out a section if it hasn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion—or, conversely, cutting off one that isn’t going anywhere. Maybe my only criticism of the Budos catalogue is that it can get slightly repetitive at times (and they are far from alone in this within the funk world), so it’s encouraging to see someone taking control and making sure the live show moves forward and doesn’t get mired in any one song or section.

And this show was anything but stuck in the mud. The Budos Band, instead, revel in their own primordial muck. Burning through tunes from both the new album and the three previous—including a triumphant run-through of the Burnt Offering gem “Magus Mountain”—Tankel and co. made the 90+ minutes feel more like a single, ungraspable moment, simply because everyone in the room—maybe most of all everyone on the stage—was having such a great time. A Budos show is a party, and the horn section of Tankel and trumpeter Andrew Greene remind you of that with healthy swigs of beer whenever there’s a break in the action. Tankel, who plays frontman for a group that neither has nor requires a true frontman, mentioned that some people might take offense at the band’s onstage attitude. “The drinking, the cursing—it’s making people uncomfortable,” he noted. According to the response from the sardine-packed crowd, they didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Tankel’s between-song quips frequently alluded to the new album and how it was a clear divergence from The Budos Band I-III. He thanked the audience for following the band down “the dark path that is the fourth album” and later asked—as any self-respecting Afro-funk-metal outfit would—“Are you ready for the sorcerer summoning the demons from the underworld?” And while he was most likely referring to the malevolent, long-bearded conjurer featured on the cover of the album, he could have just as easily been talking about the other Budos “frontman,” the similarly bewhiskered bassist Daniel Foder.

Never confined to one position on stage, the wide-eyed Foder wielded his instrument like a two-handed wizard’s staff, brandishing it out over the crowd at all angles while deftly willing it to produce the thundering foundation of the Budos sound. Moving freely around his bandmates all night, Foder leaned into each of them in turn, seemingly transferring some of his metal bravado in the process. The entire room, including the band, appeared to be under his spell. If the horn section is the head of The Budos Band, the guitar and organ are the body and the rhythm players are the legs, then Foder is some form of necromancer at the helm of it all, inspiring life in the corporeal monster that is this band’s strange and wonderful mix of genres and spirit.