Just because I don’t understand MOPDTK doesn’t mean I can’t like them. I mean, not too long ago, they did a note by note, breath by breath repetition of Miles Davis’ modal classic Kind of Blue. Now, just a couple years later, they’re going to the music and mood of the Roaring Twenties,. As with that era, expect a lot of banjo and brass, and you get it with Steven Bernstein/tp-sltp, Dave Taylor/btb, Brandon Seabrook/banj teaming up with Jon Irabagon/ts-ss, Ron Stabinsky/p, Moppa Elliott/b and Kevin Shea/dr working out Babe Ruth era tunes composed by the bassist.
Lots of vaudevillian two steppers as the valves growl on “Hi-Nella” and honky tonking “Honey Hole” while Stabinsky’s ivories take you to the downtown saloon on “Bloomsburg (For James Joyce).” Things get a bit more 21st Century as Irabagon lets loose on “Kilgore (For Kurt Vonnegut)” and “Glen Riddle (For David Foster Wallace” while the album comes to a screeching close on “Five (Corners, Points, Forks).” Repeal the 18th Amendment!