The Meters – Look-Ka Py Py: #843 of best 1,000 albums ever!

Why is The Meters’ Look-Ka Py Py on my best 1,000 albums ever list?

Get down with the funky miracle.

What does The Meters’ Look-Ka Py Py mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?

I’m going to cheat off of Wikipedia’s aggregation of review snippets about Look-Ka Py Py, which do a way better job than I ever could have done of describing the New Orleans-based Meters’ second album.

Cub Koda of AllMusic said of the album and the band: “The second album by The Meters continues the sound that made them New Orleans legends.”^[2] Ted Drozdowski of Rolling Stone characterized the album’s sound as “clear, unhurried and certain”. He characterized the guitar sound as “brief, precise”, the organ sound as “free of the rhythm”, the bass sound as “fat, saw-tooth grooves”, and the drum sound as “dry and up front”.^[4] In ranking the album for its greatest-all-time list, the magazine noted the bass riffs and the off-beat drumming.^[5]

Pitchfork adds: “The album is best defined by [Ziggy] Modeliste and [Art] Neville’s tug-of-war. On an album with no spoken language, language is born elsewhere. Out of instrumental gestures, out of silences, out of two sounds crawling atop each other over and over.”

The title track, “Look-Ka Py Py,” is laid back organ funk for days.

“Funky Miracle” couldn’t have done a better job of describing itself. I also can kind of imagine a young trio of dudes in New York City who would go by the unlikely name of the Beastie Boys digging this album on vinyl out of a crate, throwing it on, looking at each other and giving one another a little nod. Because they both Understood and Knew.

As aside: this is my favorite track on Look-Ka Py Py.

“This Is My Last Affair” is a more laid back… well, affair that I could imagine slotting into any number of retro hip or otherwise heist-type movies while the gang is organizing their strategic operations or some such.