I thought I heard a dead man play

TV on the Radio is a pretty cool band. I liked their first EP and LP fine and even found some tracks to love on them. However at the end of their new album, "Return To Cookie Mountain,"there is a bonus track called "Things You Can Do." It is... affecting. Fela alive, it is marvelous, heart gripping, booty moving, soulful, bluesy, African. They steal from Fela Kuti even more outrageously than bands like Antibalas and their ilk, but by Jove, do they do their own thing with it. That singer fella's voice is wonderful and it sits on the track like iro (wrapper) on a Nigerian woman's ass. Musically, it's structured like the majority of Fela's music, starting in a soft and mellow Marijuana inflected groove. They don't stretch the intro for five minutes like Fela would have done but there is a small gap for you to appreciate and anticipate before the singer's voice comes in. Repititive, rhythmic melodies, the lyrics delivered with steady, unrushed pacing, and then... at 1.47, those horns, so sad and so grandiose, over and over again and my goodness, it's better than sex, or maybe it is sex because the crash at 2.20 feels a lot like orgasm. At this point, this song is pure rapture, all id, no ego, just pleasure, no thought necessary, emotion is all. The dueling horns, that relaxed, blues guitar doing naughty sophisticated things in the back, the piano in that sad but sweet little key I only ever hear in African music... Lord only knows how long it took them to master this.

I must be driving my neighbours nuts. I've been playing it on auto repeat for a half hour now, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to stop. Get this song, download, buy, steal, whatever. Get some speakers with half decent bass, put it on auto-repeat, sit in the dark and let this wash over you. And if it does to you what it does to me, come ask me about Fela Kuti and I'll tell you how you can experience this again, and again. Better than drugs,which I've never had; better than sex, or at least a less complicated pleasure; better than cigarettes, sublime as those can be...