Pop Music Review : Tackhead Fails to Nail the Funk at Palace

Tackhead has been widely touted as a radical new force in underground rock circles but the cross-cultural conglomeration’s performance at the Palace on Tuesday night suggested that it’s yet another band that works better in theory than practice.

It’s certainly an alluring concept on paper. Start with the core instrumental trio of the Sugar Hill studio band (which defined the early rap/hip hop sound in the early ‘80s with songs like “The Message”), add vocalists Gary Clail and Mark Stewart (the latter formerly of the early punk era English band the Pop Group), filter everything through the mutant mix of celebrated Anglo reggae producer Adrian Sherwood and you have one potentially savory recipe for sonic guerrilla warfare.

But Tackhead sounded more tame and mundane than innovative and wild during the bulk of its 90-minute set Tuesday. The opening numbers by the Sugar Hill trio--guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbush and drummer Keith LeBlanc--were little more than unadorned backing tracks waiting for a singer and Sherwood’s vaunted mixing technique failed to create any striking sonic booms.

One song where LeBlanc established a pervasive go-go beat and Wimbush thumb-popped a simple bass melody while McDonald overlaid thick power chords hit the mark, but a lackluster cover of Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic” quickly killed that momentum. Clail made a negligible impact in his two brief vocal appearances, but Stewart’s towering presence and anguished vocals on “Hypnotized” and “Survival” gave Tackhead a much needed focal point.