Some of you know -- and some of you don’t know – that I am a marketing student at the present time, but very few of you know that I took a jazz appreciation elective this semester. This course has given me a new perspective on a lot of music I have been hearing in recent weeks and months, and Hazmat Modine is a great example. What you get out Hazmat Modine’s album Bahamut largely will depend on the breadth of knowledge that you bring into the listening experience.

On a very basic listening level my first impression was that Bahamut sounded like a glorious, larger and more successful version of the Black Keys’ bold attempt at a traditional blues cover album of Junior Kimbrough Tunes, Chulaholma. For many that comparison would be good enough; if you liked Chulaholma then this album will probably appeal to you. However, the comparison is short-sighted -- much like someone who sees a movie like one of my favourites, Waking Life, and sums it up as being a movie about dreams. They aren’t entirely mistaken; they sure as hell aren’t right either, and admittedly, I was wrong about Chulaholma.

While I am taking an elective in jazz appreciation I probably could have learned a lot of the course outcomes by just deeply immersing by myself in hours of listening sessions with Bahamut. Listening to Hazmat Modine is very much like an audio lesson on the history of music from decades such as the 20s, 30s, 50s and 60s. Most of it is rooted in blues, from more straight-forward style to a more abstract, loose sound. Still, they take you through experimental jazz, swing, New Orleans style R&B, Middle Eastern and African sounds, using proven methods like call and response with the band (which is fronted by two harmonicas) playing off one and another in an amazing back and forth, and never forgetting to leave you humming a great melody along the way.

What is also neat about Hazmat Modine is the wide array of instruments they’ve pulled out of their collective tickle trunk (if you didn’t watch Mr. Dressup growing up, then you had an incomplete youth) for Bahamut. I could see it now: two hundred years from now the world is all but destroyed, but somehow one CD managed to stay intact and was recovered by a future civilization that wanted to understand the music of our generation; that album is Bahamut. I’m laughing just thinking of this -- what a Futuramma episode it would be. Here are some of the instruments the band uses: tuba, harmonica, flugelhorn, flute, duduk, banjitar, claviola, sheng. I’d like to tell you that I know what all of these are, but that would be a lie. I can tell you listening to them is neat.

Some albums need to be heard to be understood, and Bahamut is such an album. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple songs that you must hear before you leave this earth. “Broke My Baby’s Heart” is an absolutely brilliant song that lasts for over seven minutes and uses every second well. Throughout the entire album your ears are treated to what might very well be the best use of harmonica in over a decade, and this song is no different -- but that’s not why you have to hear this. Midway through the song, lead singer Wade Schuman puts on a performance for the ages when, out of nowhere, he breaks into a sort of scat-falsetto that just sends chills down your spine -- and apparently the audiences spine too as they immediately break into applause for what they’ve just experienced. It lasts all of twenty-one seconds, but it’s twenty-one seconds I’ll remember the rest of my days.

And as rare as it is to find one song that wowed me that much on an album, Hazmat Modine has another. “Lost Fox Train” is different than the other thirteen songs in that it really is just Wade Schuman doing things I would not have even imagined could occur with a harmonica. At times you would almost swear it’s a saxophone, and the speed he manages to get it up to is exhilarating. I thought I was a fan of harmonica going in but I’m not sure I will ever evaluate its use the same after this.

The other twelve songs are all great in their own way. Album opener “Yesterday Morning” is probably the best straight blues track here and maybe a nice place to start if this album seems outside of your typical comfort zone. “Bahamut” tells an absurd story that in structure might remind you of the Gorillaz tune “Fire Coming out of a Monkey’s Head” – well, at least in the way the story is told. And the album-closing eleven-minute rendition of an Al Goodman tune of the same name is a crushing way to end such a powerful album.

Hazmat Modine is simultaneously ahead of and behind their time, and all the more brilliant for it. You must hear this album.

SCORE: 9