Kalu & the Electric Joint

One Liner:  Funky African-tinged rock and roll flavor from some local fellas

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but they call themselves Afropsych

Home: Austin

Poster Position: 20
Weekend Two Only.
Sunday at 1:40.

BMI Stage.

Thoughts:  This is an Austin band with vocals from Kalu James, a Nigerian immigrant, and guitar wizardry from Jonathan "JT" Holt.  Solid action for a band who has gotten to open for the Black Keys and Parliament/Funkadelic, among others.  James immigrated to the US at age 18, and moved to Austin at age 25, where he teamed up with Holt to combine the West African influences with some bluesy psych rock style.  Both sides are really strong.

Two albums with a big gap in the middle - 2017's Time Undone and 2023's Garden of Eden.  The biggest streamer is off of that first album - "Too Low to Get High" has just over 2 million streams.

Starts up like something the Black Keys would make, or at least Dan Auerbach would produce.  That song jams.  Understated and building it up at the start, and then you feel him reaching out to take it bigger.  But the guitar tone has a yummy fuzziness and warm tone.  Good stuff.

Funny thing, I was just listening along and in my head I was like, "man, this guy sort of sounds like David Shaw and the Revivalists, what track is this so that I can make note of that" aaaaaaand the algorithm had switched me over to David Shaw.  Funny.  But the comparisons I have more often while listening here are TV On the Radio, and then every once in a while he sounds like Peter Gabriel.

The second-biggest track is from the newer album, the title track, which has 664k streams.

I really dig the guitar sound at the start of that one.  I'd say that overall, this is a really fun sound and would likely be fun to see on stage.  Every once in a while, the groove edges towards the edge of the rails, it feels like they are sloppy sometimes.  Maybe sloppy isn't the right word, but in general it is fun stuff.