Foxy Music

Album Review

Mushroom had evolved a long ways from the Krautrock roots of the earlier recordings by the time of this almost wholly instrumental 2001 release. At this point, they were taking more inspiration from the late-'60s and early-'70s jazz fusion of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. You don't have to make an educated guess to figure that the opener, "Growing With Herbie," is in the Hancock mold, with choked electric keyboard, flute, angular electric guitar, and evanescent trombone swirling around the mix. Whether the fusion echoes are explicit or not, they put the stress on loping jazz-rock grooves, sometimes drawing from the free-association jamming of acid rock bands like the Grateful Dead, sometimes getting into the more intellectual sounds of Soft Machine and '70s Krautrock. This is more accessible than average prog rock revival music, though, because there's a far greater deployment of riffs you can move to. There's also a more easygoing, humorous bent to the way the instrumentalists interact, avoiding for the most part the over-cerebral stiffness of much art rock and fusion. Their influence may be apparent, but there's a pleasing loose, organic flow to the compositions. They also dip into a very wide tray of paints, from moaning female vocals (on the title track) and the doomstruck church bells of "Getting in Thun" to the wildly burbling electronic swoops of "Super Goody Bags."