(Rounder)
You know that feeling you get when you lift the couch cushions during spring cleaning and find enough change to buy a snack? You're happy, right? Brave Combo did a little housecleaning to produce Mood Swing Music and has given music fans the happiness equivalent of finding a $20 bill in the laundry.
The 20 outtakes and overseas releases on Mood Swing Music document nearly every style Brave Combo has ever recorded while paying homage to some of the band's favorite musicians and performers. It's hard to imagine a single band having - much less needing-- a sampler album. But the Combo has recorded so many styles from around the world that a sampler is probably the only way to get a sense of the band's true gift for making authentic world music fun.
The opening waltz version of "Three Ducks" is as simple and gorgeous as anything from Manheim Steamroller. It's followed by Brave Combo's cover of "Little Bit of Soul." Originally a hit for The Music Explosion, the Combo's version rivals Devo's cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction" for quirkiness and probably lifts the spirits of all the punk and new wave clubs that supported the band back in the early 1980s, when the best label anyone could find for its music was "nuclear polka."
"Volare" is done in Japanese "Ondo" style, combining traditional and popular music elements, and introducing Japanese Ondo star Kikusuimaru to an American audience. "Come Back to Sorrento," the Italian pop standard, gets a Latin disco update that's guaranteed to get your hips shaking. Also included is an outtake of the title track from the Brave Combo collaboration with Tiny Tim called "Girl", Tiny Tim's last major release.
Brave Combo doesn't run away from the label "quirky." And it wears its "polka band" moniker like the Congressional Medal of Honor. But the most famous band from Denton, TX, isn't a novelty act, unless you consider people who make music because they love it a novelty. Forget They Might Be Giants or even early Weird Al Yankovic, who would throw in elements of polka strictly to be funny or campy. Brave Combo records entire albums of polka to make people happy simply because ringleader Carl Finch and his band of merry men believe above all that music should be fun.
If you find polka a little difficult to swallow in large doses, there's enough Tex-Mex, cha-cha and straight-ahead pop included here to keep your interest and perk up your next party.
Or try popping it in the player the next time you're doing household chores. You'll never vacuum the same way again. Because it's not necessarily the amount of money you found under the couch cushion that makes you so happy, it's the fact that you've uncovered a little treasure. With Mood Swing Music, Brave Combo proves those treasures can take a lot of different forms.
