Lust

Try to imagine pseudo-jazz warbler Michael Franks fronting a band consisting of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen on Fender Rhodes and assorted keyboards, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore on guitar, and jazz-funk bassist supreme Melvin Gibbs, and you'll have some idea what this record sounds like. Lust consists primarily of keyboardist Peter Scherer and guitarist/Franksophile Arto Lindsay — Fagen and Moore don't participate, but Gibbs and the skronky guitarist Marc Ribot do, to good effect. The music they make is smart, funky, and danceable, in a late-'80s kinda way. The noisy, non-tonal guitar work made famous by Lindsay and Ribot is frequently placed so far back in the mix as to be almost completely absent, which is too bad, since it adds an edge that puts this music over the top. When it does come to the fore (as on the world pop-ish "Ponta de Lanca Africano Umbabarauma" and the George Clinton-esque "Monster") and Gibbs' energetic, bouncing funkiness is allowed free rein, an otherwise better-than-ordinary album becomes something special.