Consumer Guide Album

Funkrust Brass Band: Make a Little Spark [self-released, 2024]
Having never seen one of the live shows this Brooklyn-based brass band's fanbase kvells about, I assume their hyperactive, densely populated, quite findable "Terminus" video is a suitable introduction to their all-white, sexually integrated, determinedly eccentric Balkan-New Orleans hybrid with a fictional post-apocalypse backstory. Their latest and richest recording, while well-executed and then some, is goofier and more playful than "Terminus," although half a dozen viewings in I can't claim to have caught myself humming it on the way to the grocery store. Still, this album establishes them as a worthy, ambitious, and imaginative project. I'd go see them play in a minute if it wasn't too far away on the subway. A-