3 out of 5

Label: Daptone Records

Produced by: Tommy ‘TNT’ Brenneck

The Budos Band have stretched across jazz, funk, and rock of various forms to become one of the coolest sounding instrumental bands of all time. There are groups that operate in this vein – cinematic, slinky – but finding a way to avoid sounding kitsch or derivative (or to fall into some improv-adjacent indulgences) in that scene is tough; BB have avoided that on every album for quite some time. “Long in the Tooth” – a nod to that legacy – ads another form of expression to their bag of tricks: a sprinkle of Leone, Western-soaked sauntering. The album ripples with sweaty expanses and long walks and slow pans; heading off into sunsets and vigilantes and baddies staring one another down. This sits atop their strong groove, keeping with the movie vibes to segue into 60s, key-warbling psych; The Man With No Name and James Bond, hanging out.

Every track seethes with this stuff, and flows seemingly effortlessly. Every track is, as usual for Budos, the coolest sounding thing ever. Er, and yet, I can hardly tell one track apart from another.

There’s a backhanded compliment here, in that the band can manage to write a very similar song sbout 11 times over, and not only does it not get tiresome, but you can put this thing on a loop and be bobbing your head to it the entire time; however, that’s also kind of… weird, and makes for something very ephemeral. The album evokes an epic sensibility, and yet is over in a flash – no song pushes far past three minutes.

Which makes Long in the Tooth a mixed bag: it’s addictive while it’s playing, but somewhat disappointing from afar. Another notch in Budos’ belt, perhaps, in keeping their bona fides ever expanding, while also amounting to something of a “sound like” experience – never quite landing on a definitive song or sound, and just sounding more generally like a Budos release. …Of which we can always use more, though it’s nice when the experience makes a more direct impact.