Feature photo: Ebru Yildiz
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog is what happens when jazz musicians play punk rock but the deeper truth is that Ribot is just a jazz musician with the heart of a punk rocker. That happy combination has produced some wonderfully off-the-wall music from him whether he’s leading this nihilist trio with Shahzad Ismaily (bass) and Ches Smith (drums), making totally unpredictable but totally stimulating solo albums or serving as sideman to other defiant outsiders like Tom Waits. His railing against the Establishment is the fuel for a tireless activism for change, as evidenced in a grand project that in examining the musical history of political calls to arms, it becomes one itself (Songs of Resistance: 1942-2018).
Ceramic Dog, though, channels a lot of that rage at the current state of affairs through audaciousness and humor, so perhaps it was totally appropriate that the late summer 2018 of such a serious project like Songs of Resistance was preceded by a few months with the release of the delirious new Ceramic Dog offering YRU Still Here?.
All over YRU Still Here?, Marc Ribot and his merry little band of misfits extend the middle finger to any person of institution that raises their ire, such as the Border Patrol (“Fuck la Migra”), Islamophobia (“Pennsylvania 6 6666”) and of course, the MAGA crowd (“Muslim Jewish Resistance”).
But first, Ceramic Dog gives the stink eye to American society at large, asserting its right be mad at everything (“Personal Nancy”) that — probably unintentionally — sounds like the early-era of The Residents. There’s nothing punkish about Ribot’s jazzy guitar on the aforementioned “Pennsylvania 6 6666,” the breezy, Latin vibe betraying the retelling of Ismaily’s real-life experiences facing hate and physical beatings growing up in Danville, PA. The fun/funny “Freak Freak Freak on the Peripherique” is disco that the ‘disco sucks’ crowd could actually warm up to. “YRU Still Here?” isn’t quite the loud, brash song the title might suggest, a persistently strummed acoustic guitar laying a country folk foundation with whining electric guitars stirring up the dusty ground.
The instrumentals make hay in their own way, mainly by revealing the breadth of styles the three master with ease. The bass-poppin’ funk excursion they call “Oral Sidney with a ‘U'” is just off-kilter enough to make George Clinton and Bootsy Collins beam with pride at what they’ve influenced. “Orthodoxy” travels from India through Arabia on its way to America. “Rawhide” isn’t the famous version but conjures up those same Western spirits, with a splash of surf rock to make it saucier. “Shut That Kid Up” is weird in that it isn’t; it’s a straight-up, simple riff rocker.
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog anything-goes ethos has always been defined more by its attitude than any musical style; so much so, it’s easy to forget that they touch on so many idioms. And it seems with every passing year, their outlier music hits ever closer to home.
YRU Still Here? is distributed stateside by Northern Spy Records.
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