Captain Rugged

Captain Rugged purports to be the sound of a man on a mission, with Nigerian Afro-rock musician Keziah Jones adopting an alter ego – that of an African superhero with the rebel spirit of Fela Kuti and musical powers of George Clinton. The fact that the result sounds like the Dave Matthews Band is presumably not the desired outcome. Even lyrically it’s hard to fully understand Jones’ concept of a Fela-aping Socialist icon who has arrived to save Lagos from its current predicament. The majority of the songs here are attempts at satires that are musically placed in-between funk and bass-heavy R&B. The songs groove and smoulder, bouncing along in pleasant approval of themselves, never too far from another percussive guitar hit or slap-bass riff. It is a long way from the kind of rabble-rousing call-to-action you’d expect of Fela or the kind of African superhero that Captain Rugged aspires to be.

If the songs themselves were good, all could be forgiven but, apart from ‘Hypothetical’, which recalls TV on the Radio at their most direct, and the tale of modern immigration heard in ‘Lunar’, there are few memorable tunes or canny observations. Lagos is far from being saved just yet.