New York City's glorious garage-noise mutants Boss Hog have released the track "Formula X." The track appears on their first studio album in 17 years, Brood X, due for release this March 24th via In The Red Records. Listen and share "Formula X" here. Led by Cristina Martinez (ably assisted by her faithful sideman/husband Jon Spencer, as ever playing Flavor Flav to Cristina's Chuck D), Brood X feels less like the work of a group who've been on ice for so long, more a slithering and sludgy monster of an album, a boiling pot of hot funk keys, growling punk attack, searing blues breaks and the ground-shaking holler of Martinez.
Having recently shared a new track in '17', whose dark observational poetry has already been championed by The New York Times, The Quietus, SPIN and more. Speaking of their almost two-decade gestation, Cristina explains:
"There are different broods of cicadas emerging in cyclical periods, there are 13-year cicadas and 17-year cicadas. That's what
Boss Hog is like - we're operating on our own cycle. We go underground for a number of years, re-emerge, make beautiful sounds, and then go away. That's our cyclical life."
On hiatus since they finished promoting 2000's icy, wonderful 'Whiteout' album,
Boss Hog began stirring again late in 2008 with the first of several short runs of shows. "We'd play a handful of shows, once a year,"
Martinez remembers. "Festivals, the Amphetamine Reptile 25th
Anniversary party, some benefit shows." Things started getting serious a couple of years later, when the
Boss Hog all-stars - Martinez, Spencer, bassist Jen Jurgensen, drummer Hollis Queens and keysman Mickey Finn - decided this reunion habit was worth committing to wax.
Cooked up in the same Lower East Side basement where
Boss Hog brewed their first blistering noiseouts, and cut at Michigan's
Key Club Recording Company on the same Flickinger N32 Matrix console Sly Stone used for There's A Riot Goin' On, 'Brood X' is serious music for serious times, the perfect soundtrack for a necessary revolution.
The 17-year cicadas have re-awoken, and not a moment too soon. New York has changed beyond recognition and there's a buffoonish villain entering the White House, but Martinez's towering vocals and vicious, hilarious, emboldening lyrics have never sounded so sharp, nor
Boss Hog so timely. Opener 'Billy', all brawny low-end and delirious funk organ, finds Cristina and Jon howling about "The brink of destruction!" over apocalyptic beats, while Ground Control, a prismatic vision of today's Big Apple, includes the bitter observation, "This is the cost of privilege".
"A lot of Cristina's lyrics on this album resonate with me more deeply since the election," nods Spencer. "They're blues songs, protest songs."
"The songs do feel oddly relevant now," Cristina adds.
xx
The
Boss Hog All Stars
Cristina
Martinez - vocals
Jon Spencer - guitar & vocals
Jens Jurgensen - bass
Hollis Queens - drums & vocals
Mickey Finn - keys
Brood X
1. Billy
2. Black Eyes
3. Ground Control
4. Shh Shh Shh
5. Signal
6. Rodeo Chica
7. Elevator
8. Formula X
9. Sunday Routine
10. 17
Tour Dates:
Feb 3 - London, UK - Oslo Hackney
Feb 4 - Maastricht, Netherlands - Muziekgieterij
Feb 5 - Utrecht, Netherlands - Tivoli de Helling
Feb 6 - Leuven, Belgium - Het Depot
Feb 8 - Rouen, France - 106 Club
Feb 9 - Paris, France - La Maroquinerie
Feb 10 - Nantes, France - Le Stereolux
Feb 11 - La Rochelle, France - La Sirene
March 30 - New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
March 31 - Buffalo, NY - The Waiting Room
April 1 - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
April 7 - Washington, DC - Rock and Roll Hotel
April 8 - Philadelphia, PA - Underground Arts
Boss Hog - Brood X Links:
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