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Hazmat Modine
Bahamut
Barbes Records
Hazmat Modine is my new favorite band. Once you hear their debut album, Bahamut, you will understand why. With more horns and misfit instruments than you can likely identify, catchy rhythms spanning the last hundred years from throughout the world, and a bluesy groove that ties the whole album together, Hazmat Modine has a sound that captures the quintessential spirit of Americana. Listen closely, and you are likely to hear avante-garde jazz, New Orleans R&B, swing, jugband, rockabilly, bordello blues, Romanian folk, Middle Eastern, and klezmer styles, perhaps all in the same song. The musicians deftly play all manner of horns and harmonicas, as well as more obscure instruments like the Hawaiian steel guitar, flugelhorn, banjitar, claviola, sarrusaphone, and the sheng, a Chinese wind instrument. Borrowing rhythms and instruments from so many diverse sources to make a truly unique sound is the essence of American music, and Hazmat Modine may well be the new masters of Americana.
Bahamut opens strong with Yesterday Morning, a rocksteady-blues number with multiple harmonicas, tuba, saxophone and percussion and Wade Schuman's vocals that are at once smooth and gritty. It Calls Me follows with bluesy guitar and Schuman's falsetto voice, combined with the vocal accompaniment by Hun-Huur-Tu, a group of Tuvan throat singers, to make for an eerie, otherworldly sound. Next comes the title track, written about an aquatic creature of Arabic mythology. The first Hazmat Modine song I heard and still one of my favorites, it has an infectious calypso beat, fun lyrics, and horns and harmonicas that playfully complement one another before rising to a crescendo after a quiet, spoken intermission about Bahamut.
Lost Fox Train (for Joe) is a jaw-dropping harmonica solo that demonstrates what an amazing musician Wade Schuman is. The three-and-a-half minute song ranges from Appalachia to honky-tonk, with smooth, flowing notes to staccato, doppler-like rhythms, and unexpected vocalizations and barks through the harmonica, all of it expert and unlike anything I have ever heard before.
Who Walks In When I Walk Out? is another favorite song. A modern rendition of Al Goodman's original, with a slow Middle-Eastern influenced intro that leaps into Romanian, Hawaiian and ragtime sounds and lyrics that tell the classic blues story of being run around on. Who walked in when I walked out? / Who gave me that Hi, baby? / Who's that cat that's got me jealous of you?
Bahamut is an all-around incredible album. Every track is excellent and there is not a second of wasted sound on this record. Considering that Hazmat Modine have been playing the New York music scene for over eight years and Bahamut was just released in August, it took a while for them to record their first album. It is, nonetheless, a phenomenal debut and I only hope Wade Schuman and company continue creating music this good for years to come.
-Alicia Olivant
11/27/06 >> go there
