Banyan “Live at Perkins? Palace” [Sanctuary Records]

Mac   3/5/2005   A Library

Led by Stephen Perkins, formerly of Jane’s Addiction, this indie-pop is too jazzy for rock and too rocky for jazz. Meeting somewhere in the middle, Perkins (drummer), Mike Watt (bass), Willie Waldman (trumpet) and Nels Cline (guitar) cover as much ground as the Indian fig tree the band is named after. They’ll shift things to high gear on tracks #1 & #7 with hard driving rock/pop, then slow things down to the smooth soft sounds of tracks like #3 and #8. Playing to genre stereotypes, the faster songs sound more like rock and the slower songs fall more into the jazz groove. Elements of both are still found on every track. Though the album says Live on the cover, a few studio effects have found their way onto the recording. Final note: the last track, Fun House, is a Stooges cover.