Presumably from the packaging, the Mamas Gun 2016 EP Room Service represents the “leftovers” from the Cheap Hotel album sessions. That cheesy enchilada do taste even better when microwaved the following day!
Distortion and dirt, more fuzz in the guitar, a bit more room to stretch out. However, Mamas Gun as a unit is tight, as it grooves and swings through five songs penned by Andy Platts and the gang.
Room Service features a wider bandwidth with a greater variety of influences from the ’60s through the ’90s, incorporating even more funk, R&B, jazz, trippy psychedelia, and reggae into the soul mix. It’s fun concoction that is there to please. The production and engineering are a little rougher around the edges, with a bit more distortion and dirt and wobble in the guitar and synths, but this human factor I think enhances the enjoyment in preference to the common hyper-quantization and auto-tuned production effects of today.
Mamas Gun features Jack Pollitt on drums, who preceded Chris Boot; Andy Platts as the multi-instrumentalist, vocals, and primary songwriter; David Oliver on keyboards; Terry Lewis on guitar, and Cameron Dawson on bass. Jack Pollitt (Beyonce, Pharrell Williams) is a good fit, fortifying this lineup with his funk and jazz sensibilities.
Not surprisingly, the Room Service EP features catchy, hook-filled earworms per the usual Mamas Gun fare.
“Telephone Ring” is a snappy, party song with an immediate sense of Prince influence that allows the band to stretch out the funk a bit. “Play” features a little rock, a little acid jazz, a little Lenny Kravitz, while “Into My Life” is another Prince-influenced ditty, with Pollitt grooving that backbeat into another head bobber. Mamas Gun surprises/not surprises with another elegant, soaring almost Donald Fagen-esque middle eight – then parties on in the cheap hotel.
“You, Me Us & Everybody” (we don’t need no stinkin’ Oxford comma!) is a breezy shuffle of sunny-island connectivity of counter rhythms. The track is interrupted by a 6/4 fusion instrumental break, before a dreamy, jazzy tropical evening gathering propels the party forward again. It’s mega fun, as energy and excitement drips off that room-service gyro sandwich.
Then we somehow unveil a five-star continental meal amongst the menu of melted cheese sandwiches, waffles and greasy burgers in the EP-closing “Saint Maria.” Mamas Gun relays the story of one of the youngest Roman Catholic saints, the martyr Maria Goretti, apparently from the viewpoint of her assailant Alessandro. Clues about a life cut too short are scattered across 5:14.
“Saint Maria” begins with a haunting backbeat and bass reminiscent of the Temptations’ early-1970s keepin’-it-real hits, over syncopated and contrapuntal rhythms:
Papa gone from malaria
Mama left alone, could barely cope
Alessandro Serenelli
Yearned to pick the petals from the rose
When Maria refused the advances of the older teen, as an 11-year-old girl, she was stabbed repeatedly.
Cut … and watched the claret flow.
Maria survived the stabbings and surgery for a day – and while hospitalized in pain and dire straits forgave Alessandro and uplifted the spirits of the surgeon, pharmacist, chief of police, and family before passing. There was only one verified photograph of Maria Goretti, alongside her two brothers in a garden, surrounded by large ducks.
In a photograph that’s faded
Slowly as the corners start to curl
But the reverie is over
and the pain returns the second that I wake
Years later, Alessandro and Maria’s brothers had dreams where she visited them and inspired life-changing events. Alessandro swore to dedicate his life to Maria and became a lay brother for the church. Maria was beatified in 1947 by Pope Pius II, and is the patron saint of teenaged women and victims of sexual assault.
Oh, Saint Maria wherever you are
I dreamed that you were alive
In the garden, you gave me flowers
The chorus features a massive, ebullient hook as the beat goes double time into 8/8 (or is it 9/8?), creating a tidal wave of energetic ear candy. After two verses, chorus, bridge, chorus “Saint Maria” is a song where the reverie could go on. And so it does … for another 1:55, as if we were listening to a strutting second-line funeral parade fading down a French Quarter boulevard into the misty evening – with all witnesses to another miracle attributed to Saint Maria.
- The Unforgettable Mamas Gun Gem Tucked Away on Their ‘Room Service’ EP - November 5, 2022
- Young Gun Silver Fox – ‘Ticket to Shangri-La’ (2022) - October 24, 2022
- Mamas Gun – ‘Golden Days’ (2018): On Second Thought - August 31, 2022
