Weak numbers fall flat and the good ones are worked to the bone. Despite the cultural aphrodisiac of campy ’70s funk and soul ambience (complete with pops and scratches), the album is gripping only in fits and starts. The self-produced Natural Ingredients begins with “Citysong,” a right-on metropolitan manifesto, and then shifts nicely through the trance-poppy “Deep Shag” and the ominous wah-wah strut of “Angel,” but ultimately bogs down in repetitive time-wasters. Ironically, as Luscious Jackson grew into a mighty live act, its studio work - played on real instruments, with samples reduced to an incidental role - suffered, cutting back on the giddy carnival panic that moved Manny into high gear. Although the all-fun In Search of Manny, released originally on the Beastie Boys’ indie label and then again via Capitol, was essentially recorded as a duo, the full band appears on two tracks, including “Bam-Bam,” a kitschy and gleeful party groove that became a showstopper. As the group evolved toward the stage, drummer Kate Schellenbach (another Village pal, she was in the original punk incarnation of the Beastie Boys and played on the band’s 1982 Polly Wog Stew) joined, as did keyboardist Vivian Trimble.
Gabby Glaser (guitar, vocals) and Jill Cunniff (vocals, bass), friends since the two twelve-year-old protopunks started hanging out together in the East Village around 1980, formed Luscious Jackson a little more than a decade later in a basement studio, rapping their offbeat adventures (“She Be Wantin It More,” “Daughters of the Kaos”) and aggravations (“Life of Leisure,” a rip at mooching slacker boys) over extra-cool loops that owe something to ESG. The band’s graffiti-tag logo pretty much sums up the local pride and color that roots these New York women and their smart, catchy music.
The contentious issue of cultural appropriation - which might have dogged any other hip-hop-rock quartet formed by two grown-up club kids and an ex-Beastie girl - is no match for the contact-high sensibility of lines like “I got pretty little feet they’re so petite/I got shiny little legs so nice and neat/My bellybutton-Q-tip it clean,” as Luscious Jackson details in “Let Yourself Get Down,” the infectiously funky groove that opens the seven-track In Search of Manny.
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