Sad Rockets - Transition

Andrew Pekler, AKA Sad Rockets is my newest find and I couldn't be happier with his third release (the first on Matador) Transition. It is a slick and melodic record filled with enough jazz and funk to satisfy anyone who has grown sick of laptop land atmospherics.

It is hard to expain the music of this one-man band because his influences are so extensive. "Winter's Over" sounds like an instrumental version of Led Zeppelin's "Rain Song," "Senio Junior" is a fusion of trip hop and German electronica, and other tracks are strongly influenced by dub. And that is not to say this is a disjointed disk because it plays as well as a whole as each track does individually.

From guitar to keyboard to bass, Pekler plays every instrument on Transition and his talent as a musician and a songwriter is remarkable. This record is at times sexy and at times funky, but the underlying tone is unpretentious slickness. There are no gimmicks to be found here, just good music that sounds better with each listen.

-- Robert Lanham