EP Review: Lettuce - Mt. Crushmore
Don’t let the opening title track of Lettuce’s Mt. Crushmore EP scare you off.
Easily the weakest of the five full-length cuts, “Mt. Crushmore” sounds like music one might hear in a cartoon kingdom as the animated royal family saunters in to greet its subjects.
Elsewhere, however, the 20-minute EP finds the New York-based septet offering up their blend of instrumental, horn-driven funk laced with bits of soul and trance rock, fusion and hip-hop, to good effect.
Comprised mostly of leftovers from 2015′s full-length LP, Crush, Mt. Crushmore includes two more fragments titled “’Lude” (parts 5 and 6 appear here) that are little more than filler. The remaining tracks are highlighted by the pulsating groove of “116th St.” and the only non-instrumental, “The Love You Left Behind,” featuring the brass pipes of longtime Lettuce collaborator Alecia Chakour, now of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
By no means essential listening, Mt. Crushmore nevertheless bolsters Lettuce’s well-deserved rep as a band that lays it down and, in the process, gets its listeners up and on their feet.
Grade card: Lettuce - Mt. Crushmore - C+
12/4/16
