Cultural miscegenation (race mixing) has created much great American popular art. Wouldn't have Rock & Roll without it. Leave it to amorphous alt-rock collective Cush to push cultural reappropriation and reinvention paralleling Paul Simon's Graceland adventure. Instead of sub-Saharan township jive, however, the Cushites make early African-American sacred songs their own on this Spirituals EP. A tense dynamic balances archival respect for source material, punk rock giddiness for plumbing something exotically cool, and a tender, and intense love for the Lord of whom they sing. Most revelatory of the disc's six tracks are the call-and-response stompers, sounding like what The Make-Up might be were gospel more than a pose to them. Elsewhere are subtle uses of drones and folkie recastings of simple, emotionally-charged hymnody. A bracing detour for a crucial act.
Editors' ratings - Doug 4/5, Jason 4/5
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2002Reviewed by Ken MuellerOK, kids, get out your scorecards. It's time to play the Cush game again! Run out and get what is billed as the first of three EPs of spirituals from a rather fluid group of guys (and gals) that record under the name of Cush. Every time this band puts out a new disc, Internet discussion boards are all atwitter with talk of "Who sang track one?" or "Is that so and so on the last song?" And this…Similar sounding releases
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