prowler

Prowler
"En Garde"
Score: 7.5
By John Mariano
Philly's Prowler is an ass-shaking party in a box, ready to be unleashed on unsuspecting masses everywhere. With a combination of funk, rock, and all out freak out Prowler send themselves (and listeners) into a whirlwind of dancing, clapping and shouting like something out of a 60s beach party flick. Make no mistake, Prowler wants you to get up and shake it for all you're worth. Keith Griman yelps, howls, and croons like there's no tomorrow. On "Holy Most", B-movie samples and a driving beat are used to turn a call and response jam into something of truly epic proportions. While "Ahead of the Pack" shows the band getting their indie rock groove on, with angular guitar riffs and an undeniably catchy hook. Although all these tracks are meant to be listened to in large rooms with many people, the one that'll probably get you on your feet fastest is (appropriately) "Jimmy Legs." The band plays like they're in a race against time and space, chanting "It's all good and it's all right. Every night like a Saturday night!", while hand claps drive the point home. If this doesn't get you on your feet, you best check your pulse. Although this album is a good way to introduce yourself to the Prowler crew, you MUST see them live to fully experience the power and energy these guys bring to the table. It's a guaranteed good time for sure. (Unsigned)

- 215 Magazine

PROWLER - "EN GARDE!"

An electronic experimental dance funk punk explosion from Philly. Sounds like a collision of Man Man, Death From Above 1979, and Big Audio Dynamite. In other words it's pretty much amazing.

BEST TRACKS: 6 "Jimmy Legs", 2 "Beware Delaware", 1 "Holy Most", 8 "Spooky Pussy", 3 "Pis Pis", 7 "Be An Explorer", & 5 " Ahead Of The Pack"

RATING: 5 of 5

- Y-rock on WXPN

On the Prowl
Al Sotak

Like the best kind of grimy dance party just beyond the comforts of Center City, local funk-fused Prowler are one of Philadelphia’s sweatier, better kept secrets. Drawing on influence definitively more eighties hip hop than electro, the group has until now been content to be Philly’s occasional and danceable house-band, who with their own variety of garage-grown disco perform fewer shows than your average upstarts hell-bent on next-big-thing spectacle.

Not that they lack dedication. The Bucks County transplants have been performing in various incarnations since at least 2001, and even then guitarist Ryan Kerrigan had high school history with future members of Prowler. By the singer’s own accounts, Keith Greiman had been hanging around practices until he had ingratiated himself into the group, but it was the introduction of the oldish school E-MU MP7 drum machine, the group’s official seventh member, that turned Prowler into the movable dance-party they are today.

“It was back in 2004,” says Greiman. “We invited Darren [Blase] to play and he showed up with this rad drum machine. It was definitely our first jump into the disco dance vibe.”

This saw a release under the new moniker Plump, before the band decided to revert back to their original handle.
“Plump was the meat in a Prowler sandwich,” says Kerrigan.

By then firmly entrenched in their new sound, the group found themselves infusing new influence into their older material. They released Communizzle in 2006, and this year’s En Garde, both of which features material that dates to the group’s inchoate days as well as remaining staples of their live set.

“Some of the songs we have carried over- retooling and re-recording them. They inevitably get broken out during a show. It makes us smile,” Geiman says. “’Beware Delaware’ was our powerhouse opener from the original Prowler. It is possible that that song was written back in `01,” says Kerrigan. “We would wait until the drummer would crack the snare and *POP*… ‘Beware Delaware!’”

Armed with standards from their own past, Prowler now has their eyes on the future. After a video for “Holy Most” produced by the Philly-based Severine Productions, the group began working on a follow-up to En-Garde. Promised for this spring, it will feature remixes of some of the Prowler back-catalog with guest MCs as well as the promised addition of more live percussion.

- Phrequency.com

When booty-funk ensemble Prowler released Communizzle in 2006, Philadelphia should've thrown 'em a parade worthy of Hamels and Howard. The local rump-shaking electro quintet achieved what few Caucasians, maybe only LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, have since the '90s: combined slick and sassy production techniques with dense, dark soul and complex breaks.

Communizzle songs like "World Domination" and "Uh Huh Yeah"? Couldn't get enough of them. Should've had DFA remixes for them, or locally grown revisions from the likes of Pink Skull.

Yet while P-Skull's live-band electro-funk debut Zeppelin 3 was (deservedly) celebrated wildly, Prowler was left in the cold.

"We're not ones to crave recognition," says Prowler guitarist and drummer Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan along with vocalist Keith Greiman, bassist Mike Staszeski, keyboardist Kat Paffett and percussionist Tyler Griswald (to say nothing of "sixth Prowler," producer Darren Blase) formed whatever Prowler was in 2000 — a dirty rock 'n' roll act with a Twisted Sister drumbeat — before they turned toward the funk. But we'll get to that. "We've been honest to ourselves and what we want to produce. We know how long we have been doing this, and there are others around town who know our history. That we play shows where bunches of people come to get sweaty and thank us afterwards is recognition enough."


That's all well and good. But I'd like you to recognize Prowler. And their new CD En Garde! forces you to do that. Everything that was Communizzle is brassier, denser and funkier now.

Melodies with big dynamic production? "Holy Most."

Songs about tax-free shopping with slap-happy disco beats? "Beware Delaware."

Vaguely salacious tunes with waddling basslines that the band promises is about kittens? "Spooky Pussy."

Rugged tracks that sound like Danzig? "Jimmy Legs."

Danzig? Yep. You can still hear elements of Prowler's chunky rock-out past.

"Since most of us go as far back as elementary school, the true thump of Prowler was beaten out on jungle gyms in the middle of Pennsylvania years ago," laughs Greiman.

"Prowler reared its head first ... as a gutter-rock act playing loud tunes with a drummer who made everything sound like 'We're Not Gonna Take It,'" Kerrigan continues.

En Garde!'s "Beware Delaware" was one of those original Prowler songs — pretty much exactly the same as it was then. "Only now there's a whole bunch of cowbell," adds Kerrigan. He goes on to say that when they lost that dreaded drummer (un-named, better off for everyone) Prowler named itself "Plump," tried "something new with drum machines" and recorded early versions of songs that wound up on Communizzle.

Then it gets tricky. "We dissolved Plump, took a break again and came back as Prowler but with the other guitarist of Plump and the bassist of the original Prowler. The original Prowler had the dirt and the rock; Plump had the dance and the pop. With this current version we brought both of those together."

Kerrigan doesn't care much about trends, but he is a pragmatic man. Mention the notion of timelessness and he laughs. "The idea of timeless is great, but it would be foolish to think in five years it will not sound dated. We're a technology-based band, and we used different technology than we did on the first record and are already using newer stuff for the songs we are working on now."

The guys in Prowler get that they were doing the DFA/Talking Heads/Happy Mondays Caucasoid funk before the curve caught on. No matter whether it was poppier or harder-edged, the band did what it did to achieve what Greiman calls the boom-bap principle. "The dance-rock, party-time thing has obviously become a popular sound out there. But our boom bap has stayed intact. We've always just been a bunch of folks who enjoy each others' company and this is the noise we make."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)
- Philladelphia City Paper