Guitars, synths, vocals, percussion, computer, guitar, vocals, bongos, analog and digital processing-- I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but Shaggy Black is clearly a jazz record.
Here/there Dino Felipe and Nick Forte may come off a Black Dice cover band ("Gnome On the Noggin"), or Fennesz worshippers with mostly good intentions ("One Needle Per Village"), or a chopped-and-screwed version of Hair Police ("Hoof Lager or Horse Pills"). But when it comes down to it, F+F swing harder than all them-- shit, they swing period. Jazz (but not free jazz) purists in the indie rock midst, the kind who approach things from an "Is this jazz?" perspective like they teach you at college radio: Check the processed vocal riff on "Pick Yer Poison", which sounds like Louis Armstrong trying to drown himself in a bathtub. Yep, he just doesn't have the heart to go through with it.
Hey: Maybe jazz greats unsuccessfully committing suicide isn't what Shaggy Black is really about. Maybe this is a disco record. Maybe that's why the buzzy pitter-patter of "Anteater" sounds like the Bee Gees being electrocuted by the state for serial murder. Maybe that's why "Violent Flag" has such a violent, tribal call-to-war vibe, a most poetically roundabout paean to "Disco Duck", whose radio jock composer Rick Dees is still living, I repeat, still living.
The blanks are yours to madlib, and you might as well: My gripe with Shaggy at first was never a paucity of syntax or front-end beauty (this record is gorgeous), just no context. But the flip of context-lack is complete malleability, and really, this record's refusal of one proper "carefully considered processed noise" read might be the only reason worth giving a shit about it. I see trees of green, you see skies of blue, dig?
