Mucca Pazza- Safety Fifth (Electric Cowbell Records, 2012)

Mucca Pazza are a few-dozen strong group from Chicago, an ensemble that blends a bewildering array of styles (tango, spaghetti western soundtracks, and heavy funk, to name just a few), delivers the resulting musical stew with instrumentation befitting a traditional brass marching band, and throws in some accordions and surf guitars, just for good measure. This, their third album, is the first to be released on Brooklyn’s Electric Cowbell Records, and it fits well with the label’s “anything and everything funky” aesthetic. The tunes range from madcap carousel fanfares to slithery groove monsters to pastoral waltzes to stomping oom-pah shanties. Some selections come off like soundtracks to cop shows from far-distant cultures, some like marches performed by a group that just discovered the Sousa songbook at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey, and occasionally, the band’s improvisational nature and experimental impulses shoot straight past traditional forms and towards some distant free-jazz galaxy. It’s an album I’d recommend to anyone with an open musical mind; a record that’s insanely diverse, completely unpredictable, and thoroughly endearing.