New Groove

A New Groove features high-powered performances by a bevy of musicians from across the globe. The London-based Alice Russel brings her signature sound of funk and fun to the lush 70's-esque orchestration of "High Up on the Hook," while Canadian emcee K-Os hip hops his way through the half b-boy, half zoot suit adventure that is "Crabbuckit", a gem from his second album Joyful Rebellion. On the head-nodding "L.I.N.N.", Stockholm-based but internationally-known producer Freddie Cruger, a.k.a. Red Astaire, is joined by the silver-tongued Linn, who's been called Sweden's Jill Scott.

The album gains its balance with other artists who step in to help cool down the pace. The recognizable grooves of Thievery Corporation get a gentle reworking from Kid Loco on "Until the Morning" while the Puerto Rico-born, Brussels-based Gabriel Rios weds his old-school Latin roots with his love for modern production and melody on the quirky "Unrock." Other musical globetrotters, including France's newest sensation Jehro and Australia's latest success story The Cat Empire, lend their sensibilities and expertise to round out this eclectic collection of artists.

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For their latest excursion into the arch, increasingly mainstream land of multi-kulti groove-meister pastiches, Putumayo has chosen a more forward-leaning direction -- or have they? As time goes on, music of this genre, with its tendency toward faux-ironic, retro-glam-showbiz quotes and neo-hipster attitude, far from being on the cutting edge, is beginning to seem downright cozy and nostalgic. For example the singer on Bitterweet's "Dirty Laundry," wreathed in chirpy girl-group references, refers to herself as a "bad girl." What can that possibly mean in the industrial West, at the dawn of the present millennium, when pretty much anything goes? Did she wear fur, patronize an unfashionable tatooist, forget to recycle? K-Os, from Canada, again looks over its shoulder, this time to The Last Poets and Ray Charles' "Hit The Road Jack" -- not boring but hardly newsworthy or thought-provoking. Many of these bands seem to be playing at being shady characters to impress their friends and audiences. The tunes are elegant, studied and even sporadically barbed. But truly dangerous artistic statements tend to be created by obsessed, passionate loose cannons, not anal retentive poseurs indulging in self-conscious theatrics. --Christina Roden