★★★★★
Velour Lettuce specializes in a horn-heavy, swaggering sort of funk, one best matched with cutting a rug or strutting down the street. But on Fly, the fourth album from the 20-year-old septet, we're treated to a few mellow moments, too--ones better suited for bouncing ideas than bouncing around the room. "Bowler," especially, makes you move and marvel...
- www.relix.com
2012-06-25
★★★★★
To proclaim that Lettuce avoids the usual pitfalls of contemporary funk is a left-handed compliment for sure, but it does say more than a little about the power and cohesion of Fly. In the diversity of material and arrangement, not to mention the savvy musicianship and production by which the band parlay their skills, this album is the sound of a group full of the confidence that comes with validation of their chosen style...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2012-06-07
★★★★★
Velour Recordings Here's the deal: Lettuce is this time around's version of The Meters. And that's the truth. I'm talking that same ability to build a groove around a hook that'll nail you first pass through and embed itself so deep into your rhythm lobes that you'll think it's been there for years. I'm talking that same ability to use the aforementioned groove as a launch pad to explore the far reaches of a tune's melodic galaxy...
- www.jambands.com
2012-05-31
★★★★★
Like Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Lettuce presents nonstop boogaloo funk/jazz. The hard-jamming band is an outgrowth of friendships dating back to high school and Berklee's summer program 10 years ago. During that era Lettuce jammed incessantly and, according to its folklore, the band often showed up around the Boston area not having instruments or a gig. The group was always asking, "Let us use your instruments, let us jam and let us crash here"-thus the name...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
Boston funk collective Lettuce had been dormant since 2001's Outta Here, but the 2006 deaths of James Brown and hip-hop impresario J Dilla inspired the band to get back in the studio. Rage! aims to pay homage to many of funk's founding fathers, and bassist Erick Coomes, keyboardist Neal Evans, saxophonists Sam Kininger and Ryan Zoidis, guitarists Eric Krasno and Adam Smirnoff and drummer Adam Deitch deliver 14 cuts that do just that...
- www.jazztimes.com
2010-02-19
★★★★★
It's the pleasant surprises that wake us up some days. When I put Lettuce's Rage! into my CD player, I braced myself and walked towards my kitchen expecting to hear some sort of angry vegan tirade. Thank God for small miracles and the holy number 7! With Rage! the seven artists in Lettuce raise the dead and uplift the living. This funk jazz collective dedicates its work to the memories of James Brown and James Yancey (J Dilla) who both died in 2006...
- www.popmatters.com
2009-03-21
★★★★★
The second studio set from this sideman supergroup of sorts follows its debut by six years but maintains a similar approach. While the first album recorded by the eight-piece ensemble (that gets together only sporadically between other full time gigs) was funk-influenced, this is pure '70s styled retro funk. Think Earth, Wind & Fire, P-Funk, the Crusaders, Tower of Power, James Brown, Rufus with Chaka Khan, you get the idea...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
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