Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band - 55

Pitchfork 74

The Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band is a pet project of the German instrumental group the Mighty Mocambos, a practiced collective that makes versatile deep funk. Bacao is a vehicle for bandleader and guitarist Björn Wagner's dedicated enchantment with the steelpan drum, which he and three other band members play on a new debut full-length called 55.

Steelpan drums are traditionally hammered out of 55-gallon oil barrels and inextricably linked to Trinidad, where they were invented in the 1930s, borne into the island’s calypso and soca music traditions, and have since been co-opted around the world. The metallic ping a pan makes is entirely unique for an acoustic instrument. With a series of soft strikes, players can conjure a swelling, fluttering effect; with stronger contact a pan rattles. More generally, the sustained notes obscure the player’s attack, as if the sound floated into earshot from a faraway place instead of bursting from an acute mallet strike. Conversely, it’s almost impossible to achieve the sharp briefness of a staccato. It’s a deceptively sensitive piece of metal that is easy to make loud but finicky to get right.

Wagner spent time learning the instrument and commissioning a handmade pan for himself while in Trinidad and Tobago, and Bacao released its first two songs—a pair of Meters covers—in 2007. By the following year, the group had grown more playful with its covers, releasing a stunning instrumental take on 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” that sounds unmistakably like the steelpan riff at the heart of the rapper's original, now with the added appeal of a Caribbean groove and the kind of swampy horn solo expected of a Latin jazz burner.

About half the songs on 55 are covers, all of which are immediately endearing. Since its invention and because of its timbral distinction, the steelpan has long been an instrument used for unexpected covers of popular songs. 55, which places previous singles alongside new tracks, sidesteps pure novelty factor in that the band is an impeccably tight funk outfit to begin with, and the pan is folded in as seasoning. Given that Wagner and his bandmates are recent converts, none of the pan playing on 55 is flashily virtuosic, but they’re deft and restrained use of the instrument—in this case both a single tenor steelpan as well as the lower registered double second pan—is nonetheless the album’s obvious calling card.

“Dog Was a Doughnut,” a delightful rework of Cat Steven’s shifty electronic original, is one of the album’s most sparsely arranged, the pan walking in awkward step with the rest of the percussion instead of standing out front. Bacao is prone to crisp mid-song breaks that frequently center percussive elements like a cowbell as much as a drum kit, but the group has the impressive coordination to move as one as well. The guitar is sometimes tucked into the groove as a jangling or ticking rhythmic element, but on tracks like “Queen of Cheeba,” a constant guitar riff becomes the woozy centerpiece of a psychedelic-tinged Latin jam. Originally a 1980s political anthem from John Holt about marijuana in Jamaica, “Police in Helicopter" digs into heavy psychedelic reggae territory instead. “Scorpio,” an oft-sampled legendary breakbeat track from Dennis Coffey, gets a true-to-form but sped-up rendition here that trades the famously overdubbed guitar motif for the sound of the featured instrument. As a groove-forward band, Bacao are shape-shifters in the best sense.

As the “P.I.M.P.” rendition suggests, Bacao are also molded by hip-hop. On “Round & Round,” they flip the smoothness of Hi-Tek’s wondrous original beat into a lazy shuffle, the pan clunkily plucking out the catchy refrain while the guitar creeps alongside. It’s “Love Like This,” a slinky cover of Faith Evans’ Grammy-nominated Bad Boy-era R&B hit, that takes the cake, accomplishing the rare intersection of unexpected and obvious. Like much of the album, “Love Like This,” which carries a cleaner bassline than the sampled original, is built by the heavy lifting of the traditional rhythm core; the pan then drives it home. The album’s original compositions are mostly impressive themselves: “Bacao Suave” is a horn-heavy, Latin-tinged jam, while “Port of Spain Hustle” offers up the slick-moving rhythm guitar and stabbing horn runs of a disco classic.

Even though the songs themselves are short, at 16 tracks, 55 runs a touch too long, and some of the band’s early standout singles are sorely missing. Still, steelpan homages this delightfully listenable and yet devoid of schtick deserve credit. Bacao is a fantastic funk band first and foremost—the pan just adds some well-earned panache.