Sinclair serves reggae-Latin blend at AJ's with mutant-ambient Celtic of Ordinance

By Jake TenPas
The Entertainer

For every trail Bradley Nowell blazed during his brief tenure as leader and songwriter for reggae/hip-hop/punk purveyors Sublime, ten painfully bad bands have popped up in his wake to mercilessly rip him off.

It often seems, as Nowell nods permanently in his coffin, that it's impossible to even approach Sublime's sound without looking like a grave-robber with dirty fingernails, a chipped shovel, and a face stamped with avarice and shame.

There are exceptions to every rule, however, and Northern California's Sinclair is just such a band. A power trio based around the vocals and songcraft of Justin Ancheta, Sinclair eschews the punk and hip-hop edges of Sublime, opting instead for the hard-rock heaviness of Tool, the finger-picked guitar of Paco de Lucia and the funky, jazz-infused drumbeats of Dave Matthews Band percussionist Carter Beauford.

What washes ashore is a dynamic whirlpool of roots and dub reggae, Latin rhythms, tight pop songcraft and experimental forays into funk, metal and even psychedelia.

While earlier Sinclair offerings found the boys sticking too close to the familiar shorelines of the continent of Sublimination, their latest self-titled offering shows a band reaching their creative stride, seamlessly mixing together disparate elements into a whole that flows from song to jam and back again.

It starts off with "Friction," its equally driving rain and rhythm guitar, and a pulse that would feel at home in a Primus song. Ancheta's vocals have a melodic rock feel that nicely contrasts the rising fervor of the riffing, until it all melts into a Latin percussion breakdown, only to re-emerge as a soulful slice of progressive hard rock. It not only makes for the perfect lead-in to the building piece of "Animals"-era Pink Floyd that is the second track, "I'm Not Dead," but it offers a fitting intro to an album that, even when it goes astray, refuses to be pinned down.

Elsewhere, on the song "Knowledge," the Latin rhythms are pushed to the forefront and augmented with appropriate touches of ethnic percussion, lightning-quick flamenco guitar and surfer-reggae vocals. Somewhere around the four-minute mark, the whole song veers off into an entirely unexpected, but perfectly logical, direction and becomes a throbbing piece of chunky funk.

Throughout the album Sinclair demonstrates their ability to jump from one style to another like a skater leaping between the lips of a concrete pool. The promise of an explosive live sound crackles beyond the clouds on the aural horizon.

With a little luck, the trio will follow through on this promise when they play AJ's Restaurant in Corvallis on Wednesday, Aug. 24. The no-cover show starts at 9 p.m.

Opening for Sinclair will be a local quartet somehow more difficult to categorize than Sinclair. Lead by city councilor and nightlife fixture Rob Gandara on bagpipes, tin whistle and vocals, and featuring Molly Gage (violin), Dan Berry (didgeridoo) and Patrick McQuarrie (Bodhran, snare drum), Ordinance offers what I can only describe as Celtic-worldbeat-trance music.

After playing along the riverfront in Corvallis, the band has begun gigging at downtown bars, playing with a solo Ancheta at AJ's on the 6th of this month.

They'll once again join Ancheta, drummer Jesse Olswang and bassist Eric Alonzo for what just might be the strangest and most compelling mixture of musical styles seen on one downtown stage this year.

If you can't find something to like Wednesday at AJ's, you've only yourself to blame.

Jake TenPas can be reached at jake.tenpas@lee.net or 758-9514.