Soulive

To say that Soulive are an organ trio is both true and misleading. The line-up of Hammond, guitar and drums is familiar to all those who treasure their copies of Jimmy Smith's The Sermon or Back at the Chicken Shack, and the label, Blue Note, is also the same. But the similarities end there. One huff from this trio would be enough to blow Smith's Chicken Shack into the next state.

The traditional approach to the line-up (as carried on today by Joey DeFrancesco) is organ-centered, the head and the majority of the improvisations taken by a leader conjuring an orchestra of sounds from his B3, while the guitarist provides a backing palette and solos of agreeably contrasting springiness against the heaviness of the Hammond.

Soulive's Eric Krasno is no Kenny Burrell, darting nimbly away from the Hammond like Road Runner from Wile E Coyote, though. His guitar, either sent through a variety of pedals or flashing unadorned through the air like a meat cleaver, is the dominant voice in this groove-led outfit whose funk and hip- hop rhythms are beaten out molto marcato by drummer Alan Evans.

From the moment the latter attacks the kit, rearranged so that the focus is shifted leftwards to a snare, tom and high-hat threesome, it's clear that this trio is less about thoughtful exploration of a theme than getting an audience down on the dancefloor.

Such is the power of these two that the third member, Evans's brother Neal, has a far smaller role than one would expect of a man packing a Hammond. Much of the time he punched out short, chordal kicks, his whole upper torso dipping up and down in time to the beat, that kept the energy levels high.

On a long unaccompanied break he showed a preference for investigating rhythmic licks and the sounds at his disposal (he had a bass keyboard and a clavinet too), delighting the crowd by working in the riff from Stevie Wonder's "I Wish".

While having a sound that's identifiably their own, other reference points came to mind - James Taylor Quartet, for instance, or, and this may surprise some, Kool and the Gang.

When Alan Evans swung the vocal mike down to get the crowd chanting, he demonstrated the same rasp and depth as Donal Boyce did on "Jungle Boogie" and "Open Sesame". Before the disco years Kool and the Gang, it's often forgotten, were a funk crew with much jazz influence - Robert "Kool" Bell's father was a great friend of Thelonious Monk - so a nod to the Gang is no disgrace.

For once "rootsy" is an appropriate adjective. They're too rootsy to garner the kind of adulation accorded to their more adventurous labelmates Medeski, Martin and Wood. But who'll give you a better time? Soulive, no question.