If you don’t know anything about The Meters and their early days on Josie, fear not. You can’t fuck this one up. They made three albums with producer Allen Toussaint on Josie, before moving to Reprise and opening for The Rolling Stones, and all three are absolutely beyond beyond. If the JBs were the great distance funk band, The Meters were the diamond cutters, writing pop-length instrumentals that absolutely confound time and space. You know drummer Zigaboo Modeliste from Amerie’s “1 Thing,” a chop of the break on “Oh, Calcutta!” here, and that’s just a fraction of the lightworld Modeliste can wring from second line New Orleans drumming. That approach is heavy on snare syncopation, which Modeliste moved to the whole kit. The rest of the band is just as good. You’ll never hear a drum set the same way after spending an hour with Zig. The absolute rearranger of your internal compass.

– Sasha Frere-Jones