Taco Joint is a 5 piece Jazz, come blues, come lounge-y act hailing from Auckland, New Zealand. Burning Bridges is their first official release and it shows a clear breadth of musical talent that is available in this project.
At the forefront, the track is a swinging groovy jazz track. The drums tempo combined with the guitar melody
sets and almost lounge-esque flavour to the first movement, with the bass guitar adding in the funky, dancey element. The vocals are weaved well with the trumpets punctuating melody that creates an extremely enjoyable flow. That’s not all that’s too be
said about the vocals though, Megan Riegels’ style jumps from sultry, seductive and powerful to an almost scat like rap effortlessly.
The second movement and eventual build up to the climax lowers the tone to a noir-like feeling and a slower, more Adagio-esque pace to really drive down the emotional impact of section. The slowly rising bass, guitar and vocal volume all work fantastically in concert, with Robert Hudson’s trumpet taking on a lead role before the drop into the final flashing chorus.
In all, Burning Bridges is a stand out track for a first studio release and makes me genuinely excited for the release of their EP, available April 24th. It moves, grooves and clicks its fingers in an all-encompassing delightful manner.
Taco Joint is the organic fallout of leaving an opera singer, a heavy metal guitarist, a jazz drummer, a classical trumpet player and a self taught bassist in a room together, unsupervised, with their instruments.
Their music reflects the dissonance of their musical experiences with swing tunes and improvisation standing hand in hand with rock melodies and distorted virtuoso guitar solos.