‘You need to get more funky’
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If it helps, Zoobombs have been compared to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. It doesn’t help me, so I’m going to try to describe what I hear.
I hear two chords. I hear a lot of syncopated beats. I hear a vocalist who does something in between singing and chanting. I hear some really loud guitars. And I hear some great bits of English between a deluge of Japanese.
“You need to get more funky,” advises singer Don.
Zoobombs perform funk you can pogo to. It’s got fist-pumping intensity and a stubborn sense of minimalism — read: they don’t exactly write verses, choruses and middle-eights — that quite nearly reaches a hypnotic state.
If you listen too closely to Zoobombs, you might be disappointed. There’s a lot going on in their songs, but not enough to hum along or to anticipate where the next change might happen.
But if you take in the organized sense of chaos as a license to tune in and drop out or whatever the hell hippy phrase that was, Zoobombs are actually quite fucking cool.
Hell, they even cover Spinal Tap’s “Gimme Some Money,” right down to a Japanese-inflected British accent.
But in between those moments of repetitive chant-like transcendence, Zoobombs turns it down. “Pleasure Drop” is ruddy and pretty at the same time. “4190” goes for a bit of trip-hop, and “Ships Are Alright” could have come straight out of a Muddy Waters’ nightmare.
For the rest of Let It Bomb, Zoobombs sound like an old 60s funk band that time warped into the late 70s and dug the Sex Pistols and the Clash. It’s a pleasing mix of modern noisemaking with some timeless rhythms.
Very few bands can make an old organ mesh well with buzzing guitars. Zoobombs is one such band.