I've been listening to Celebration's The Modern Tribe on non-stop rotation for the past few days. Lead by singer Katrina Ford, who recently did a guest vocals on TV on the Radio's latest Return to Cookie Mountain, Celebration combines elements of Sioxie-style goth, a Fela Kuti influenced horn section, and intense, tribal percussion elements, into one grand amalgam. Here, we find songs that could be sung from the tops of mountaintops, a tribute to the world before us--a basketful of crime, war, tempered with the stalwart beauty of nature and the possibilities of human kindness.
I've been following Ford and her organ-stomping bandmate Sean Antanaitis since their early days doing blasting noise punk as the Jaks and in a later incarnation called Love Life, where they paid tribute to the undead ghost of Nick Cave. The Modern Tribe documents a band that has reached a pinnacle. It taps into something primal, the idea of the spirit unbound, and the closeness of humanity with all it's trappings and vestments, to the animal world, and the world of trees lifting towards the sky, our nature as creatures of a wild, unpredictable earth. The German philosopher Hegel wrote of something called the Zeitgeist, which he defined as "the spirit of the age." Celebration ride at the forefront of the Zeitgeist, calling for a new way of being, learning and loving as the system breaks, and societal ruptures knock us further towards the abyss. And they say, Jump.
"If you hear a howl near/It's time to feel, not to fear/If you see Running Bear/Go ahead shake his hand for me."
From "Tame the Savage"
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