Cosmic 'Time' is on ALO's side

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

ALO — Steve Adams, Zach Gill, Dave Brogan and Dan Lebowitz — has a two-night stand at Wave Waikiki this weekend. ALO 10 p.m. today and Saturday $10 Wave Waikiki 941-0424 Note: Enbious opens for ALO today; Missing Dave opens on Saturday

And if it's true — as the California band's management announced in a press release — that the part-time North Shore beach folk star would be attending (and possibly jamming at) at least one of ALO's Wave Waikiki shows, it's also apt to imagine Johnson as a perfect live fit.

Judging from a couple of spins of ALO's 2002 CD "Time Expander," there seems to be room enough in ALO's trippy aural Cuisinart for everyone from Charles Mingus and Sun Ra to the Flaming Lips and G. Love & Special Sauce to join the band. Donald Fagen, however, might want to enjoy an ALO gig from an audience seat.

That's mostly because ALO lead vocalist Zach Gill's quirky bray reminded me so much of a looser, less nerdy Fagen, I was honestly waiting for Walter Becker to pop in on several tracks with one of his signature tasty bass line. Any Steely Dan comparison is apt here.

The superb openers "Time Is Of The Essence" and "Valentine's Day" boasted musicianship as sophisticated as anything Steely Dan might have cooked up, with terrific hooks, swift time changes and clever lyricism. A flourish of spacey synth steps back from the Rhodes keyboards woven throughout both songs, however, decisively separate ALO from anything the Dan would do.

ALO is at its cosmic best when it takes off on lengthy sonic jams like "Essence" and album closer "The Womb." That's when everything from funk, acid jazz, soul, psychedelics, strings and beach folk enter the mix. "Animal Liberation" ends with a blend of Flaming Lips keyboards and Chicago (the band) horns that sounded better on CD than I could ever make it read on paper.

If the album had a misstep, it's called "Kolomana," which sadly matched some of the CD's most wonderfully funked-up instrumentation with some of the lamest tiki lounge hoo-ha imaginable about a "mystical shaman from the islands of Hawai'i."

Perhaps it was the fact that I've lived here all my life (or the fact that I couldn't find Kolomana anywhere in my Hawaiian dictionary), but do you think you could stomach a chorus that goes something like, "Kolomana ... molten lava ... high on Java ... in Arizona" for long?

Didn't think so either. Skip Track 3 and enjoy the ride.