Thievery Corporation
Radio Retaliation
(ESL, 2008)

From Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street to Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. is a place normally typified by lobbyists, partisan politics, and transient inhabitants. However, it is one of the more important musical locales in the country, if not the world, in part due to Thievery Corporation and their ESL (Eighteenth Street Lounge) record label.

Thievery Corporation is not so much a group as the brilliant brainchild of the DJ duo Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Formed in 1995 at the club where the two got the name for their label, the group has helped shape and change thoughtful dance music as great innovators in the genre of music referred to as downtempo, chill, and any number of other monikers since releasing their debut album, Sounds From the Thievery Hi-Fi, in 1997. The duo didn’t invent the genre, but they have rescued it from merely being mellow dance music or something for UK and European club kids to listen to at sunrise as they come down from their ecstasy-fueled nights of dancing at foam parties in Ibiza.

Garza and Hilton make dance music that is highly listenable and is, in fact, not just dance music. The group’s sound is a hypnotic mix of house, acid jazz, dub reggae, bossa nova, rap, lounge, and what could loosely be described as “world music.” Thievery Corporation’s evolution has been slow but steady. With each of its first four albums, it has slowly introduced more vocals into its music, with like-minded singers like Bebel Gilberto, Pam Bricker, and Emiliana Torrini contributing to its first three albums. Their fourth album, The Cosmic Game, was a big leap forward, and such guest vocalists like Perry Farrell, David Byrne, and Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips indicate that the secret was out.

That 2005 release was actually their last album until this new one, as the Versions album from 2006 consisted primarily of remixes of tracks from such artists as Nouvelle Vague, Wax Poetic (featuring Norah Jones), and even Sarah McLachlan, Herb Albert, and the Doors. With its newest album, they picked up where it left off with The Cosmic Game, and made easily their best and most consistently satisfying album to date.

Again, bringing vocalists into its sound makes this, like recent albums, more than just stylish dance music. The vocalists who dominate this new recording primarily come from the world music scene. Anushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, represents Thievery Corporation’s exotic, Eastern side, while Seu Jorge covers the Brazilian side. In many respects, these two sides of the group’s music rescue the sound from being just dance music.

The vocalist who truly brings a new element to their sound here is Femi Kuti. His Afrobeat stylings, combined with a Latin beat, result in even more of a world (or as they like to call it, “outernational”) sound. There are also brief moments when the group’s non-dance influences can be heard, with what sounds like Ennio Morricone echoing here and there, and vocals that, on the one hand recall an edgier Sade, and on another, Gil Scott-Heron.

With all the compilation albums, singles, and contributions to soundtrack albums, as well as the members’ work as mixers, DJ’s, and producers, Thievery Corporation are clearly major players on the international music scene, and seem poised to continue to influence the sound of mainstream pop music in the next decade.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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