Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band - Bird Head Son (2009)

Real.Com Music “Bird Head Son” Review
Bird Head Son doesn’t hold back and ask ‘would you like to step inside?’ No, this album grabbed our hand and started gesticulating, chatting and laughing all the time, walking excitedly beside us. And the stories come thick and fast. It’s a journey you see, a journey to lands RealMusic Blog has never been to of mango trees and jungles, stories of brothers, cousins and friends we’ve not met but have now been introduced to. There is poetry here, delivered in breathless and excited style from Anthony Joseph, intense stories of relationships, politics and laughter which draw upon the poetry foundation of the dub poets Linton Kwesi Johnson or Benjamin Zephaniah. But this album isn’t just Anthony Joseph: we’ve also got the Spasm Band, funking out for our pleasure and undoubtedly their own. There’s some serious partying going on in the wild and exuberant style of the great funk outfits the Meters, Fela Kuti or The J.B.s. The Spasm Band are a professional funk outfit you see: they would not put forward a funk unless they meant it. And here’s what they mean by funk: wild saxophone, vocal interplay, percussion, weaving basslines and intricate rhythm – it’s all here.

Cyclic Defrost Review
The first thing that hits you is the funk, the throbbing urban grooves, taut, almost militant 70’s funk that drifts into the stirring power of spiritual and free jazz, even Afrobeat or bizarrely enough Calypso music. And then we meet Anthony Joseph. He is a poet. But you wouldn’t know it. He comes across like a New Orleans preacher, loud, proud, rousing, over the sweat and the sin of the music. His delivery is somewhere between Martin Luther King Jnr and Jimi Hendrix, these incredibly vivid spiritual street stories that build and swell with the music. Make no mistake he’s not thumbing earnestly through a dog eared excercise book, he’ll wail and sing, writhe and live the music. These are songs, not poetry put to music, where the music can just flow on instrumentally for long periods before Joseph will pop up with his unique wordplays. Jospeh is Trinidadian, based England, he even lectures in creative writing there, though it’s his super cool 7 piece band with horns, hand drums, wah guitar, organs and shakers that really takes this out of the classroom. They’ve really transcended the spoken word medium here, creating the kind of obscure rare groove record that crate diggers would go mad for if it was made thirty five years ago, like it sounds like it should have.