ne of us equals many of us,” Guru once intoned, “and if you disrespect one of us, you’ll see plenty of us.” He may as well have been talking about music critics, who one could view as being disrespected in any number of ways by the musical events of this past year: even if garage-rock and electro fetishism has been pandered to, in one sense, there is a certain ratio (ha, ha) that exists between this and a flagrant invitation to critical disrespect: if Fischerspooner or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs make themselves pretty easy to write about, they also seem essentially disinterested in the meting out of value judgments. However, the rock-scribe’s hand can only be gnawed upon so much before it can take no more: I would estimate that we’re going to hear a call to arms fairly soon, one for the oft-stated “end of nostalgia.”


Look, I hate it too, but maybe I’m just lazy. Though I have yet to own a mesh trucker hat (though I came pretty close a few weeks ago, seeing a blank one just awaiting some sort of Dr. Who iron-on at the local Dollar Magic), I’m not entirely sure what I’d do were my cheap, cheap thrift-store clothes suddenly deemed unacceptable. A H&M just opened at the mall I cut through on the way to the train station, and it scares the shit out of me. Similarly, I get a sudden, piercing enlarged-cluster-of-blood-vessels-in-the-brain feeling at the thought of trying to keep up with the labyrinthine musical output from some matrix of Cologne labels or Italian Shoutcast stations or one of Philadelphia’s phalanx of hipster-turned-DJs. So I keep trawling the dollar racks and listening to the same fifty records that have entertained me endlessly for the past five years, really. At least I’m sort of fending off the hydra of capitalism, right?


The thing is, listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings sets aside this dialectic. If all nostalgia was this good, not only at conjuring up its era’s essence perfectly (just check the cover art, which includes not only the fabulous liner-notes delirium we’ve been expecting since the Makers, but the band members’ Zodiac signs and a dance-steps chart) but at being so eminently listenable, well, I could—but remember my tendency to eat the same meals every day—live the rest of my life listening to this stuff.


For the uninitiated: Sharon Jones is a prison-guard-turned-startlingly-dynamic-singer, whose tone vacillates from raw and sultry to piercing and soulful; when backed by the Dap-Kings, the house band for this Stones-Throw-like imaginary-reissues label—it’s not difficult to find reference points in bands like Germany’s Poets of Rhythm, who became known for planting their newly-pressed 45s in used-vinyl repositories across the nation—the result recalls James-Brown-produced songstresses like Marva Whitney (whose “Unwind Yourself” forms the basis for DJ Mark the 45 King’s “The 900 Number,” which laypeople will surely recognize as the tune that formed the basis for the Ed Lover Dance). Somehow, though, this release carries an extra spark that distinguishes it from similar genre exercises, which have often focused on the mere re-enactment of hip-hop breaks. For one thing, there’s an almost unrecognizable take on Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately?”, recast as a crackling, evasive monster that seethes with vintage microphone reverb and honking sax lines. Then there’s “The Dap Dip,” complete with hyper-ecstatic drumroll-and-organ-laced intro, complete with an announcer’s just-straitlaced-enough-to-be-believable pronouncement of this new dance craze: “They say you get it in your pants!”


Really, there’s not a throwaway track here. I was half-expecting a weak ballad of the sort that even the Godfather himself included on his mid-60s LPs, but I got “Cut the Line,” which wasn’t even listed on the back cover; not only does it feature rock-solid drumming and a truly electrifying organ solo (it’s hard to play this sort of thing without succumbing to knowing corniness or Medeski, Martin, and Wood-level smirkiness) and another great vocal performance, but it may even be the best song on here. This is the kind of record that defies criticism. No, really. Sharon and the Dap-Kings don’t need people like us. They exist in a universe of their own, where fake applause permeates the run-out grooves and the fade-outs come as suddenly as the breakdowns. But even when the noise has died down, the beats could easily keep going on forever.