Shanghai 5 -- Under a tent, under the full moon

Well, heck.
When digging through the new releases, a very interesting cover caught my eye. When I sampled the first few tracks, a very interesting sound caught my ear as well. It was decided. Shanghai 5 would be the next crazy new sound I'd check out.
I'm happy to say that this group does indeed have some cool and groovy sounds. I was hoping for some more up tempo stuff, but what they put together is not bad. In fact, I'd even dare to say pretty good. Shanghai 5 refuse to be tied down to one sound. On this disc alone, they cover a polka, convert a cars tune, hit a show tune (which I believe was supposed to have a vaudeville sound) and then settle into a nice slow groove using whatever instruments may be at hand. These just happen to include a slide guitar, banjo, mandolin, Moog, vibes, congas and a few others I just don't have the energy to mention. Since the slower stuff wasn't blowing my dress up, it calmed me down from the early ecstacy I was experiencing when I popped it in the CD player.
Given my strange musical tastes, I found my favorite tracks to be Circus Polka and Just What I Needed, which is the Cars cover. This disc is very satisfying in that the tempo and style changes keep it interesting all the way through. You don't feel that the next track is more of the same. That's good, because it isn't.
The slow tracks did stick the - in the A- ,though. All in all, good stuff.