Catchy, Raw, Soulful, Original Funk and Dance Music From Eliza and the Organix

by delarue

There’s no band in New York who sound anything like Eliza and the Organix. You can dance to them, but they also have flashes of psychedelia and a vintage punk fearlessness. They’re funky, but their sound is uncluttered and gritty – is it legal to call them organic? In other words, they’re nothing like the slick, cheesy Berklee clones noodling ad nauseum into the wee hours at Rockwood Music Hall. Over the past few years, Eliza and the Organix have been gigging constantly all over town. Their new album Present Future Dreams is streaming at Bandcamp; their next show is Nov 16 at 11 PM at the Way Station in Bed-Stuy.

Frontwoman/guitarist Eliza Waldman gets the funk going on the album’s catchy opening track, My Way (no relation to the Sex Pistols classic), but she also hits some burning Keith Richards riffage. Alto saxophonist Kristen Tivey – an ambitious songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in her own right-  adds vocal harmonies over John Gergely’s subtly crescendoing drums. On the album, Stephen Cleary and Will Carbery share bass duties. The song has a recurrent reference to “doing coke out on the driveway,” which could be sarcastic – or not.

When I Call You is a snide slap upside the head of a “nihilist, masturbator, man-hater,” Waldman’s smoldering distorted chords rising to an unexpectedly swirly break midway through, with more of the band’s signature, tasty guitar/sax harmonies.

Blameless has a slinky latin soul groove under Waldman’s sarcastic vocals and wah guitar: “Aimless, shameless, am I blameless?” she wants to know. Waldman’s organ and Matt Soares’ vibes linger over sharp, staccato guitar in Trouble, an individualist’s anthem and another latin-flavored number: “I’ve been in trouble so long that I hardly remember the other side,” Waldman confides.

The album winds up with the moody nocturne Tapestry in Blue, which is an organ tune until Waldman’s guitar kicks in hard at the end. Everything here sounds like it could go on for twice as long and it would still be interesting – and you could give your lower parts a decent workout. Fans of Sharon Jones,classic soul and funk, and obscure punk-funk cult heroes like the Maul Girls should check them out.