Motion Without Pain

Album review

Baby Mammoth's sixth album is filled with the sort of holistic jazz-funk that would be more impressive to ears not accustomed to this world of tumbling instrumentalists than to previously converted fans of the genre. Motion Without Pain's eagerness to stick to mid-paced, antiseptic grooves shows itself early on in "Elephunk," where both the spliff-induced rhythms and the backwards samples wouldn't be unwelcome on an Ian Brown B-side. In another section, "The Ghost of Henry" provides an after-hours coda to the theme to Brazil. Which at least serves as passing interest amongst the album's other sluggish trip-hop: closer "Pigs in Space," for instance, twirls on its own feathery base with virtually no feeling for an effective atmosphere or epiphany. It's mistakes such as these that hint of a band's mid-tempo acid jazz foundation starting to rot away. By now, intelligent albums about wanting to "freak you" are simply too much par for Baby Mammoth's course. The album's marginal down-tempo luster will do very little for fans of either the band or this droopy-eyed subgenre. Which means one just has to feel sorry for which insults the entrepreneur will soon have to endure.
© Dean Carlson /TiVo