This Day

Album review

It's not entirely accurate to call John Brown's Body an anachronism, but it' s not entirely inaccurate either. This brand of reggae hasn't been played by any other band in almost 20 years; it's the style usually referred to as "roots" reggae, to differentiate it from the earthier and more percussive dancehall and reggae styles that developed during the 1980s and 1990s. "Satisfaction Feeling," with its slow-skanking rock-steady rhythm, could have been written and sung in 1975; "Poor Man's Prayer," with its flying-cymbals drum style, could have come out of Bunny Lee's studio in the same year (though the album's high production standards betray both songs as modern recordings). There's even an old-fashioned dub version of the latter song, complete with cheesy EQ and magically disappearing instruments. The reason it's not entirely accurate to call this band an anachronism, however, is that they manage to make such archaic music sound so fresh and immediate. That freshness and immediacy isn't quite as complete on this, the band's second album, as it was on Among Them, their previous effort, but there's absolutely no reason not to own both discs.
© Rick Anderson /TiVo