Dan Zanes – Cool Down Time

OK, so it doesn’t sound like a country record at first listen. Even after a dozen spins, Cool Down Time still won’t bring you back to the honky tonks or remind you of your blue Kentucky home. However, Dan Zanes has taken the same healthy respect for American roots music as, say, Uncle Tupelo or Gram Parsons, and has similarly updated it to his own ends. As with the aforementioned artists, the results are initially unsettling but ultimately wonderful.

On Cool Down Time, the headspinning sound has equal parts Booker T. funk, CCR swamp boogie, and crisp jazz standards (there’s an appropriate cover of Mose Allison’s “If You Live”). Producer Mitchell Froom’s keyboards and sound tricks dominate, filling the spaces between notes with odd clinks, frills, and whirs much as he did as one of the Latin Playboys (a Los Lobos side project) last year. It’s obviously a carefully sculpted sound, but one that has more of a kidsbangingcoffeecans feel than that of a high-tech studio wizard.

Even with great sounds, it’s the songs that make a record. In Zanes’ previous band — the much-missed Del Fuegos — he routinely showed a knack for melody, and with his Cool Down Time collaborators — Eric Ambel and Bob Neuwirth, among others — it’s once again the songs that shine. The bluesy guitar riff over the bayou cowbell “Rough Spot” is instantly catchy, and the images of the doctor’s office on “Tested” — “the nurse drinking diet Cokes” — can’t easily be forgotten. On “Carelessly”, he tries to start over in love; questions like “When was the last time you felt good knowing I was your man?” can splinter and disarm even the most stable relationships.

Splinter and disarm is what Cool Down Time does best. Think you’ve heard the end of southern funk and blues and soul and jazz? Until you’ve heard this, you haven’t by a long mile.