4 out of 5

Label: Slash / Warner Bros.

Produced by: Tchad Blake, Pat Dillett, Optical

Soul Coughing, for me, was always one of those “groups.”  You know the ones: whose name brings recognition; who, sure, you listen to but feel weird about owning their albums; whose singles you know from the radio, or through that random soundtrack; who seem like nice guys, which is hard to reconcile with the douchey people you sometimes see wearing shirts of the band…  And etcetera.  The jazz/funk/beat poetry thing Soul Coughing honed and sharpened and backpack-funk-pioneered didn’t really help, permanently ensconcing the band in a 90s glow before that would’ve even meant anything.  They are a “cool” group, and that can be a difficult term for some of us (idiots) to deal with.

And then what you realize, when you sit down and listen to an album like El Oso, is that when some bands make it to cool status, there is a reason.  In Soul C’s case, that’s because their core formula of a crisp hip-hop beat with a thumping bass, catchy guitar riff, and lead singer Mike Doughty’s dryly spoken repeating rhymes ends up being seemingly endlessly infectious; simply: they write pretty freaking good songs.  The group’s third disc, for all of its producer excess and perky, single-baiting bluster, is actually fairly stripped down to these core elements, with just the right amount of nuance to remind you that – head-bobbing as can be – this isn’t, like, Third Eye Blind or Smashmouth (…elements of whose popular songs confusingly/ironically/woefully seem to sneak in to some of the tracks here).  For example: way too cheery hit Circles is a Dave Matthews Band song until they keys kick in and swirl it into something fresh; So Far I Have Not Found the Science is a pop delight, kept level-headed by Doughty’s wry poetry; and Monster Man has another aggressive and catchy beat but keeps adding more and more layers, building into something much darker sounding.

They’re still a “cool” band.  This has not changed.  But El Oso pushes past my judgments by being so damned enjoyable.  I wouldn’t say it’s very deep – and I would say that’s always been a criticism of Soul C – but the beat’s the thing with this group, and almost every track here is maximized for beaty beat excellence.