Shrimp Boat - Cavale

So much music in the '90s seemed designed as if we all had ADD. It slipped into the brain and then disappeared, rarely holding interest beyond the 45 minutes or so it took to get through one play. It was a wasteland of so much chaff.

This one wasn't chaff. This one remains one of my favorite recordings. This is on my desert island list. This is just so good. It led Sam, and then me, to Sea and Cake. It is magic. It matters like few others. It is also out of print, so...

This one is my gift to you...

amg:

Shrimp Boat's final album is also their best — a brilliantly concise and colorful distillation of the group's myriad influences, Cavale is somehow both unassumingly charming and rigorously complex, a record which by all rights should buckle under the weight of its lofty aspirations but instead seems almost to float in mid-air. While the rootsy rhythms and textures of the previous Duende are still intact, they've also given way to an even greater palette of sonic accents ranging from jazz to Afro-Caribbean to blue-eyed soul, often all in the mix at the same time — from the skittering opener "Pumpkin Lover" to the shimmering pop of "What Do You Think of Love" to the jangling funk of "Free Love Overdrive," no two songs sound even remotely alike, but the album easily hangs together on the strength of the group's complete command of mood and atmosphere. A fittingly great farewell.

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