Ceramic Dog Party Intellectuals

Billed as legendary punk jazz guitarist Marc Ribot’s first proper band, Ceramic Dog are a sublimely vicious psychedelic melting pot of musical influences. Opening with a manic no wave take on "Break On Through” by the Doors, which sounds like the Creeping Nobodies on speed jamming with Hendrix, then diving directly into schizophrenic electro funk for the title track and the off-kilter spoken word Latin lounge jam of "Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch,” Party Intellectuals is a blissful fever dream that encompasses more styles than most would dare collect on a single recording. They are probably the only group — led by a guitarist who’s built a career playing with everyone from Tom Waits and Elvis Costello to Robert Plant and Marianne Faithful, and filled out by two rhythmic virtuosos who’ve backed the likes of Xiu Xiu and Will Oldham — that could make these disparate song styles form any kind of cohesive sense as an album. There are moments of beautiful minimalist post-rock poetry, progressive Floyd-ian freak-outs frolicking with convulsing modem noises, echoing banjo threatened by rumbling synth and clanking metal bumping up against Cuban folk and disco funk, demented slacker rock leading into an epic metal meltdown, subdued instrumental guitar plucking and a delightfully loose rock out jam finish to boot. And it works due to the sheer awesome will of these three musicians playing together.