Staten Island's Budos Band celebrate their 15th anniversary with the release of Long in the Tooth, their sixth long-player. While the tongue-in-cheek title refers to the band's longevity, it also references the music on offer here. They shifted aesthetic gears with 2014's Burnt Offering, adding a heady, heavy mix of riff-centric rock and psychedelia to their swaggering meld of R&B, jump blues, and Afro-funk, and placed the guitars, organ, and drums right up front. This set references the band's earliest records with horns as front-line instruments framed by inventive beats and infectious riffs. This isn't an exercise in nostalgia, however; the Budos' restlessness remains their M.O. over these 11 relatively brief tracks.
The title-track opener is classic Budos. Initiated by Mike Deller's escalating organ pulse, it is underscored by Brian Profilio's drum kit shuffle and snare breaks. Thomas Brenneck's guitar offers drama as Daniel Foder's labyrinthine bass lines frame the propulsive Afro-beat horns that pummel as they swing. The sci-fi sound effects that introduce "Sixth Hammer" give way to Ethio-jazz-styled horns playing around a melody that never arrives. Brenneck fills and adds comped vamps as they punch through with urgency and neo-psych intrigue. During the bridge, they dialogue with organ, bass, and funky breaks before Jared Tankel takes a knotty baritone sax solo. "Dusterado"'s title reflects its preoccupation with spaghetti western film themes. It's introduced by Brenneck's twangy, reverbed guitar. But there's a twist: modal Afro-beat horns wind around the bass line before shifting gears to the Memphis horn sound of the Bar Kays. While "Silver Stallion" underscores the film cue notion, it's far funkier; its hummable melody is juxtaposed against sharded power chords, bleating trumpets, and pumping Farfisa vamps. Combined, they urge Profilio to expand the beat, but he circles back instead. Brenneck's surfadelic six-string vamp on "Gun Metal Grey" is appended by congas, snare breaks, and a dominant snaky horn line that draws in the listener with punchy crescendos. Tankel's raw sax break bridges melody and riff with dynamic dissonance. "Mierda de Toro" weds Hendrix-ian psychedelia and hard soul to mariachi horns and driving rock & roll drums. "Budonian Knight" emits a bluesy guitar riff as a funky snare and conga usher in a multivalent, modal, Ethio-jazz melody from striated horns. A wafting Farfisa adds texture and dimension as a filthy bass line battles with a penetrating Echoplex. On paper, these tunes seem like sketches. When performed, they offer complexities in tone, texture, and dynamic in real time, resulting in sensory overload without emotional release. That's no mean feat. Long in the Tooth is easily the most complex album in the Budos Band's catalog. It succeeds because they refuse to graft on too many extras into their sonic and stylistic approach. The music here retains the band's core strength -- they incessantly rely on deep, hard-swinging, intensely delivered grooves, no matter the material.