The Tin Men are all about making daring feats of musicology look easy. Like, how in the world do you go full-throttle P-Funk in a two-thirds acoustic band with no drummer? Take their version of this album’s title track (originally on Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain”) which proves it’s all about how well you groove, not what instruments you use (though in this case, the nifty distortion on Matt Perrine’s sousaphone doesn’t hurt). Or their visit to an entirely different musical universe, the Count Basie gem “Cute”—again the transcription is a marvel, with Perrine soaring and Washboard Chaz recreating Sonny Payne’s classic drum solo, but the groove is so intuitive that there apparently ain’t nothing to it.

Would you rather hear some rock and roll? No sweat: “Don’t Ever Let Me Go” is an ultra-obscure early Kinks number that nobody ever covers, and shows that Alex McMurray’s garage-rock instinct is the trio’s ace in the hole. Likewise, “He Don’t Love You” is from The Band’s early days (when they were still Levon & the Hawks), and bumps ‘n’ grinds as well as the original.

McMurray comes up with five original songs and they’re as eclectic as the rest: “Hammer Boy” is likely the jolliest song you’ll ever hear about a serial killer, call it an update of the Beatles one about Maxwell. “Move Upstairs” is a funeral song whose dark humor doesn’t detract from its sincerity. Best of all, “Beautiful Shore” is an old-fashioned gospel singalong that seems likely to join “All My Rivers” on the list of McMurray’s most-covered songs. Proving that point, the disc opens and closes with bits of that song played on the Mississippi River calliope. Sounds like the tune is already part of the local landscape.