Spencer, Jon/Blues Explosion: Orange LP

"1994's Orange finds the Blues Explosion at the exact moment they left behind the pompadour-and-sideburns Crypt Records trash-can garage-rock universe and sidled their way into the Beastie Boys/Beck/Cibo Matto downtown genre-fucking cosmpolitan party. Beck actually shows up on Orange, literally phoning in a guest verse on "Flavor", and they toured with the Beasties soon after. It's easy to hear what those guys liked in the band's assault. The Blues Explosion were honest, organic experimenters-- fusing tons of different styles into their musical assault without compromising their ferocity or making any of it sound forced. These influences are fully internalized, rather than self-consciously stapled on. So we get Isaac Hayes disco strings on the drawn-out "Bellbottoms" intro, feral James Chance-sounding sax squawks on "Ditch", Meters/Booker T organ grease on "Very Rare", g-funk keyboard whine on "Greyhound". But we also get a scuzzed-up, pigfuck-descended rock band working at the absolute peak of its considerable powers. On Orange, everything falls into place like it never had before and never would again. The band's gnarled, borderline-cartoonish gutbucket roots are proudly on display, and its delirious self-glorifying goes way further than it had before." - PITCHFORK