Music Menu (3/6/09)

CD release: The acid-jazz/funk maestros were recently faced with the choice of changing the name they’ve built coast-to-coast, gig to sweaty gig, over the last four years, or entering court $y$tem purgatory to fight for it. The Charlotte-based collective decided that, with a new release recorded with Soulive’s Alan Evans in the can, they’d have to make a decision. Find out that decision at the show. In the meantime, the band’s new disc doesn’t stray far from what has worked so well for so long, since it’s built on similar late-’60s Blue Note horn heds with big bottom-end funk/fusion booty-shake. The release is digital via iTunes, but you can pick physical copies up at Lunchbox or Manifest Records. With Hot Politics. Neighborhood Theatre (John Schacht)

Hymns/Yardwork Hymns now call Brooklyn home, but the band’s primary songwriters Brian Harding and Jason Roberts grew up playing music in Harrisburg and raiding their folks’ record collections. The band’s sterling sophomore disc, Travel In Herds, salutes The Byrds, The Band, The Kinks and the Stones, and somehow pulls it off without sounding derivative. Upon hearing Yardwork for the first time, a local bass player jokingly suggested it’d be terrible if his counterpart in that band were to have an accident in the hopes they could take his place; that says a lot about this collective’s infectious energy, punk-fueled hoedowns and bright-ass future. With Death On Two Wheels. Snug Harbor (Schacht)

This article appears in Mar 3-10, 2009.