Google "indie rock" and you'll summon more than nine million matches. Even "indie metal," "indie folk," and "indie jazz" ratchet up at least 200,000 hits each. But "indie funk"? Just 26,100. "Indie r&b;" fares even worse, at under a thousand connections. This dearth of DIY lovermen and horn snappers is unfortunate, but it makes sense considering the notion of indie-ness is often typified by a subversion of the talent-equals-success trajectory. With outlandish, popular champions from Prince to George Clinton to Rick James, funk seems to require an acute set of raw chops and shameless star-quality to truly transcend. Thrill Jockey's National Trust try for an elusive indie-funk maneuver with their sophomore album, but the Chicago-based duo largely succumbs to the pitfalls of their lonely genre. Stumbling through twisty bass 'n' falsetto excursions, the band lacks the adequate songwriting gusto and ego-fueled panache to turn its sexed-up conga jams into true bottom-dwelling fiends.
Give them credit, though-- these guys are really going for it, indie ethos be damned. Just one look at the album's cover, which features main men Neil Rosario and Mark Henning striking silly poses in front of a couple pink elevators, makes their commitment to the soul spectacle apparent. Unfortunately, their idea of spectacle isn't exactly spectacular. With Kings & Queens, the Trust siphon out the psych-tinged 70s singer/songwriter leanings of their 2002 debut, Dekaggar, keeping only the elements that make asses move. The pair's penchant for over-orchestration-- Dekaggar infamously took over 500 hours to record-- remains, and more often than not, hinders Kings' libidinous ambitions.
Clearly, these boys can't grasp the concept of "say when." Just sample the stupid-long instrument list: bongos, congas, flute, piccolo, synth, clavinet, vibes, wood block, and glockenspiel. If R. Kelly has proven anything, it's that a classic funk can be gleaned from the sound of a single water drop. So, these admitted Kells admirers (they even recruited His Trapped-ness' engineer, Abel Garibaldi, to help produce this disc) should know better than to smother the painfully aimless "Show and Tell" and over-fed "Stages" with undue slops of rhythmic goop. Aside from the creepy, mouth-breathing intro track, nearly every song on Kings lugs on for more than five minutes; in most cases, they hardly contain enough passable ideas to warrant three. Still, the group's indulgences crank just right twice, on the electro-bounce of "It's Just Cruel" and the Caribbean-dream sway of "Canday's Away".
Kings' slickness is mostly wasted, but works in favor of "It's Just Cruel". "This 45 is better than the things before," sing the duo in pointed falsetto, and in this instance, their conflation of Isley Brothers-smooth and Rick James-strut is worthy of comparison to lofty forbears. Whereas elsewhere, lines like "sweat's gonna getcha/ Your body's hot to measure" sound stuck somewhere between irony and kitsch, here the Trust convincingly enunciates such slick, primal urges. Likewise, every chime and mouth percussion punctuation of "Canday's Away" contributes to its sexed-up longing, allowing the mellow melter to wallow in the fatalistic undercurrent of early-hour lust.
Indie-funk is a dangerous proposition. On Kings & Queens, chasing the groove sometimes leads to jammy voids filled with wonky synths and bouts of exercise-machine-infomercial bullshit. But it's also a worthy proposition because, as the glimpses here prove, there are few things more undeniable than a thick, icy-hot groove.
