Cannibale – Not Easy to Cook LP Born Bad (France)

CANNIBALE return to Born Bad Records with Not Easy To Cook, their second album. If Cannibale’s members brought their breakfast back up when talking about Not Easy To Cook, their listeners would be surprised. These forty-somethings signed by Born Bad Records, the image of greaser-looking garage rockers would come to mind, but with bits of exotica stuck between the teeth, Nino Nardini and Roger Roger’s Jungle Obsession (1971) on the turntable, and plastic-bottled tropical glam puked by some incarnation of Wayne’s World’s (1992) Mike Myers. Why mention all this? Because there’s a world of difference between the beginning of Cannibale’s success story and this, their second album. It wouldn’t take much to feel as if Freddie Mercury showed up in a Renault 16 to play marimba for old oafish rock fans. And actually, that’s about it: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) meets Fela Kuti in rain boots. But the most surprising thing about Not Easy To Cook is the sultriness that emerges. It’s hard to sum it up other than by comparing these ten songs with some pressure cooker in which bits of dancehall, London ska and Hawaiian dub would have cooked together. The small miracle achieved by this album, recorded by the band in its remote French village: sounding French, but Polynesian French. With Not Easy To Cook, frogs, birds, and sounds from the jungle can be heard in a living room. Those already traumatized by Arthur Lyman’s vibraphone and Les Baxter’s lounge music should feel at home.

NOT EASY TO COOK by CANNIBALE