Jam/jazz/funk percussionist/vibraphone player Mike Dillon moved to New Orleans and has immersed himself in the local club scene, playing with James Singleton, Johnny V. and a host of other improve-oriented musicians. Battery Milk was recorded before he moved here, and as the band’s name suggests, it owes a debt—albeit a slight one—to Washington, D.C.’s go-go scene. As the album title and the beautiful cover package—a printed, folded cardboard sleeve with the band’s name emerging from the naked breasts of a woman—suggest, the band comes from the trippier part of Jamville. It’s no surprise after hearing Battery Milk that Dillon toured in support of the album by opening for Primus.

 

The album is on the soundest (good) foot on the instrumental tracks, where the sense of musical adventure is tied to a groove that animates the good ideas and sustains the shakier ones. Most of the vocal tracks, however, feature J.J. “Jungle” Richards sing/speaking in a voice similar to Frank Zappa’s narrator voice. On those songs, the arrangements rely on the vocal parts, which aren’t interesting enough to carry the load.

 

The two exceptions are a cover of Aaron Neville’s “Hercules” and “Bad Man.” Richards’ singing is less stylized, and without Neville’s otherworldly voice, it’s easier to think about the words to and the grim determination of “Hercules” of how hard you have to be to make it in this world. It and “Bad Man” are the smartest cuts on the album, the latter being essentially instrumental punctuated by sound bites from President Bush, each followed by backing vocalists cooing, “He’s a bad man / he’s a mean man,” mimicking the backing vocalists on “The Theme from Shaft.” Though the political comment probably consciously ends with the assertion that Bush is a bad man, the track gains resonance by referring to blaxploitation soundtracks, the music from films that typically featured protagonists in situations from which there was no way out without some sort of sacrifice. Battery Milk may go down a few blind alleys, but the wild intelligence at its core is provocative and winning.