Comments (0) Best Local Album - 2006
Awesome New Republic
Readers' Choice: Home & Away, by the Lattinch Mob
We will not use this space to lament the loss of Awesome New Republic to the lure of the Big Apple and that distraction from music-making called "a normal life." (OK, just this space: Come back! Please, we need you! Like the Heat needs Shaq!) But there's no doubt about it: There hasn't been anything as original as ANR's jazzo-pop electrofunk soul-boogie that's come out of the South Florida music scene since, well, maybe ever. The band went through several iterations before rouletting into the two-man, drums-n-keys format found on its full-length debut, ANR So Far. And two is definitely better than one or five or seven or even 69 in this case. Find a song more hilarious and on-point than "Kill South Beach Dead" or effortlessly hummable than "Wheels, No Engine" -- made by anyone, let alone a pair of young UM virtuosi -- and, um, I guess you'll have another entry into this Best Of category. Our money says there's nobody out there anywhere that's doing smart, funny freak-pop better than these two. Yeah, it's sad to see them go, but at least we have ANR So Far to remember them by.
