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Reviews

Kid Creole & 
the Coconuts, ‘I Wake Up Screaming’ (Strut)

Although August Darnell briefly became an ’80s U.K. pop star, back home this Bronx-born bandleader is mostly remembered for Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, a swanky, quasi-big-band ensemble that’s lived on via samples in M.I.A. and Ghostface Killah jams. For his first album in ages, Darnell encapsulates Buzzard’s rise and fall with “Stony and Cory” while honing his retro-mondo beats with Hercules & Love Affair’s Andy Butler. The Kid’s voice has tarnished, but his wit-intensive, cross-genre revisionism still grooves like a multiculti Mensa disco party.