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IVH: Natural Ingredients [1]

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Date: 2022-10-06

Luscious Jackson

Tonight’s selections are from Luscious Jackson’s debut full length, Natural Ingredients (mostly).

With their dark hip-hop-influenced alternative rock, Luscious Jackson re-create the dense, multicultural bohemian world of New York in a collage of sound, where Spanish guitars, jazzy keyboards, funky beats, and breathy, singsong vocals combine into one. Like the Beastie Boys, Luscious Jackson's eclecticism doesn't acknowledge boundaries; instead, it takes freely from every kind of music. Luscious Jackson's first two recordings, 1992's In Search of Manny and 1994's Natural Ingredients, earned the band a cult following and positive critical reviews. The core of Luscious Jackson -- Kate Schellenbach (drums), Jill Cunniff (vocals, bass), and Gabby Glaser (vocals, guitar) -- all met as teenagers on the New York post-punk scene of the early '80s. Schellenbach was the drummer in the original hardcore punk incarnation of the Beastie Boys; she met Cunniff when she interviewed the Beasties for her fanzine, The Decline of Art. Eventually, the trio began hanging out, seeing bands that ranged from hardcore and arty post-punk to reggae and hip-hop. When the members graduated from high school, they went their separate ways. Schellenbach stayed in New York, where she drummed with Hippies with Guns and attended college, while Cunniff and Glaser attended art school in San Francisco, where they both played in a punk band called Jaws; Cunniff continued to edit her fanzine. In 1991, Cunniff and Glaser returned to New York and began writing songs. Eventually, the duo recruited Schellenbach and Jill's friend Vivian Trimble to form Luscious Jackson, taking their name from a '60s basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers. The following year, the group released its debut EP, In Search of Manny, on the Beastie Boys' record label, Grand Royal; it was reissued the following year on Capitol/Grand Royal. In Search of Manny received very positive reviews and the group quickly became a hip name to drop in alternative rock circles. — I Hate the 90s



Citysong [1994]



By the time they released their full-length debut Natural Ingredients in 1994, it was clear that Luscious Jackson were on their own trip. The grooves found on the first five tracks of their EP-- created by Jill Cunniff and Gabby Glaser alone-- were built from samples and mirrored the blunted Bomb Squad-by-way-of-Muggs style so prevalent at the time. But Natural Ingredients was clean and bright pop-rock with only the barest hint of wise-ass sass, and it pointed the way for the rest of their career. Like so many alt-pop groups in the 1990s, Luscious Jackson focused on positivity, writing songs about respect, inner strength, and "the state of the world" (which, in retrospect, was pretty great). They weren't preachy, exactly; more the cool older sisters who had their shit together and were always around to remind you to keep your eye on the ball. — Pitchfork



Deep Shag [1994]



Next one is from Luscious Jackson’s debut mini-LP, In Search of Manny.

The contentious issue of cultural appropriation — which might have dogged any other hip-hop-rock quartet formed by two grown-up club kids and an ex-Beastie girl — is no match for the contact-high sensibility of lines like “I got pretty little feet they’re so petite/I got shiny little legs so nice and neat/My bellybutton-Q-tip it clean,” as Luscious Jackson details in “Let Yourself Get Down,” the infectiously funky groove that opens the seven-track In Search of Manny. The band’s graffiti-tag logo pretty much sums up the local pride and color that roots these New York women and their smart, catchy music. — Trouser Press



Daughters of the Kaos [1992]



Luscious Jackson's particular innovation was to take bits and pieces of disco and funk and rap and house collapse all those jagged corners into a warm, flat, soothing strain of mood-music, not all that tonally distant from dream-pop or bossa nova. The drum-ripples and flute-flutters that drive "Strongman," for instance, could've come from some forgotten shelf in DJ Premier's record library, but even a producer as calm and restrained as Premier or Pete Rock wouldn't have muted the beat quite as sharply as Luscious Jackson did, burying it deep in the track and pushing Jill Cunniff's thick, expressionless singsong to the forefront. The chiffon synths and Nile Rodgers guitars and restless drums on "Here" are straight-up disco, but all that stuff has to come through layers of distance. "Naked Eye" buries its frisky beat even deeper, letting it prop up some gorgeously layered harmonies and sleepy half-rapping. The four women in Luscious Jackson had spent years as New York club kids, and together they projected the sense that they'd absorbed and completely internalized all those beats, that all that rhythm-driven party music had become a sort of musical comfort-food so deeply ingrained them that they couldn't make quiet, graceful music without piling a couple of layers of overdriven congas somewhere in the mix. They mostly didn't sing about clubbing; they sang about female solidarity and romantic paranoia and, like, how awesome their toes were, but all that stuff came reflected through the lens of those beats. Whenever they tried to excise that rhythmic sensibility, as on the weirdly country-influenced "Why Do I Lie?," they were suddenly totally out of their element, so that's probably why they hardly ever left their comfort zone. — Village Voice



Here [1994]



WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?

Jimmy Kimmel: Mookie Betts, Flo

Jimmy Fallon: Jack Harlow, Dwyane Wade, Quavo & Takeoff

Stephen Colbert: Cate Blanchett, Domhnall Gleeson

Seth Meyers: Hasan Minhaj, Tony Hale

James Corden: Jimmy Smits, Zach Woods, Greg Stone

The Daily Show: Constance Wu

SPOILER WARNING

A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.



NYC’s Northern State. These women fully embrace the Beastie Boys’ “pass the mic” style and even seem to mimic the Beasties as individuals. Spero has the gruff vox like MCA, Hesta Prynn is high pitched like Ad Rock while Sprout fills the Mike D role nicely.

I'm a saint not a sinner I am the prize winner,

Gonna get the NSP and host my own spaghetti dinner,

I'm a vegetarian, humanitarian, imaginarian, not a libertarian,

The country's getting ugly and there's more in store,

But don't blame me cause I voted for Gore,

Keep choice legal, your wardrobe regal,

Chekhov wrote the Seagull, and Snoopy is a beagle



Northern State :: A Thousand Words [2002]



LAST WEEK’S POLL: WHICH IS YOUR LONGEST TOE?

Big toe 53% 9 votes

Index toe 41% 7 votes

Middle toe 6% 1 vote

Other 0% 0 votes

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