Primus

In their salad days, Primus were often celebrated as one of the quintessential alt-funk bands, despite the fact that they were never really that funky. On Green Naugahyde (the band's first LP in 12 years), they've finally brought the funk. It might be the addition of Jay Lane (one of Primus' many pre-Suck on This drummers) or it may be result of Les Claypool abandoning his Residents-meets-Waits song structures for nothing more than wave-upon-wave of hippy-dippy bass noodling. Working almost exclusively off of Lane's lazy beats, songs like "Hennepin Crawler" and "HOINFODAMAN" show the Californian trio ham fisting their way through overwrought grooves, striving to sound like quirky counter-culturalists and seasoned musicians. The fact that "Eternal Consumption Engine" comes off like a poor man's Ween and "Tragedy's A'Comin'" cops Parliament-Funkadelic's pre-rap jumble goes to show just how unconfident and personality-less Primus sound on Green Naugahyde. It's too bad, because when they were blazing their trail and chasing their tail, there were nobody quite like them.