Admittedly, The Kabeedies are not a band I know a great deal about. I remember enjoying one of their earlier singles Lovers Ought To but that came out years ago. I turned to their album Rumpus from 2009 to familiarise myself with them. It was an enjoyable enough experience and the tunes were jaunty and well-executed; the kind of thing a band could continue churning out over the course of a career while maintaining a loyal fanbase and touring mid-sized venues. The Kabeedies, however, are not a band for retreading old ground it seems.
Santiago is the sound of a band taking the next step. It’s not a reinvention of the indie-pop wheel or anything like that, but it manages to take the youthful energy of earlier songs and add a sense of maturity. There’s a lot going on; some rapid-fire vocal delivery, jaunty horns and fiddly guitar bits and it’s very danceable as most Kabeedies songs tend to be. Yet rather than conjure up images of pale teenagers jumping around and getting sweaty at a gig, it makes me envision beautiful tanned people dancing on terraces in the evening sun. Maybe it’s just the trumpet and flugelhorn but it sounds fuller. There’s certainly more ‘oomph’ (or substance if you want to get all ‘real words’ about it) to Santiago than other releases by The Kabeedies and it bodes well for the upcoming album.
Santiago is currently available for free at http://thekabeedies.bandcamp.com/ and will be released on April 11th.
LD
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