The Saturday Knights

Mingle (Light in the Attic)

By John S.W. MacDonald
Published: June 27th, 2008 | 12:00am

Mingle, the debut LP from Seattle trio the Saturday Knights, features cameos by famed Nirvana producer Jack Endino; former Soundgarden lead-guitarist Kim Thayil; and Jim Horn, the legendary horn-player known for his work with the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and U2.

But the Knights aren’t some retro-grunge outfit — they’re MCs — and Mingle is a hip-hop album, though only in the broadest sense. While MCs Barfly and Tilson do rap, and the arrangements are primarily courtesy of one DJ Suspence, Mingle’s tunes range far beyond hip-hop’s standard playbook. There’s synth pop, punk rock, vintage R&B, and ‘80s metal — everything but grunge, actually. Shove the Knights into a time machine and drop them into any house party over the last 50 years, and they’d know what to do.

For a supposed underground hip-hop album, Mingle begins appropriately enough. “45” is a potent dose of retro rhyming — sunny vibes set to soft touches of Hammond organ and wah-wah guitar. Jurassic 5 couldn’t have written a better chorus: “I’m on the dance floor, and the DJ dropped by 45/ I was so hyped that I dropped by 45, and everybody just ran, ran, ran, ran.”

By the third track, though, the Bronx is long gone. “Dog Park” is a contagious bit of ‘80s pop — replete with reverb-drenched snare, fake hand claps, sleigh bells, and touches of JAMC guitar. Somehow the fact that it’s about hitting on women at dog parks — “She thinks you’re cute – ruff!/ She thinks I’m cute – ruff!/ When she goes to scoop, that’s when I’m gonna swoop” — makes perfect sense.

Only rarely do the Knights let their penchant for genre-hopping overshadow their natural talent as MCs: their sense of a good time and a good beat. Barfly and Tilson can jump from celebrating 18-year-old lust (the electro-pop of “Private School Girl”) to 35-year-old intellectualism (the brassy soul of “Patches” — as in “patches on the elbows” of Tilson’s “herringbone tweed coat”) without losing their flow or prodigious sense of humor. Like the Beastie Boys before them, the Knights prove that hip-hop can, in fact, be pop’s common language.

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