Foster and The Pranksters make exactly the sort of vintage music for the modern age which is really ticking a lot of boxes for me at the moment.Whilst there is something in its eclectic flights of fancy and sonic choices that suggests it is the product of the modern world, it beats with a more experienced mind, a more lived in heart and a much older soul. Raw blues, early rock and roll, funky grooves, soul moves and even an unexpected rap break to help the song cross the finish line all come together to build music which revels in its own ragged glory, its own substance over style heart, its own celebration of the way music used to be made whilst never taking its eye of the path ahead of it.
Think Me A Fool and the wonderfully band responsible for it remind us, in attitude at least, of the ethic of artists like The Band, ones who in the face of the current zeitgeist deliberately subverted expectation and delivered something far older and less fashionable, wonderfully out of step with the current trend and just waited for others to catch up. The Band did it in the face of encroaching hippiedom and hard rock, Foster and The Pranksters do it against a backdrop of landfill Indie, disposable pop and bedroom rap mumblers. Why follow fashion when you can start your own, wholly new, indie-roots movement?
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