The New Congress

The New Congress is a group of young musicians who have decided to combat the creeping sanitization and corporatization of contemporary pop music with a unique blend of R & B, hip-hop, jazz, and rock that it calls “urban soul,” or neosoul. The group’s second CD, Anguish, Love, and Romance, comes out in late October and is even more lushly produced than the band’s widely praised first CD, Everybody Gets Up. But live performances are where The New Congress recruits many an enthusiastic convert. Live, the songs on the CD serve as the foundation for waves of inspired improvisation, and sets are often sinuous journeys that blend five or six songs together, inevitably turning the band’s concerts into a nonstop dance-athon. Ultimately, fine musicianship is the key to the group’s success, not engineering tricks in the studio. “There are a lot of artists out there who will play a show,” says keyboardist Russ King. “But we’re trying to be known as a ‘band.’ ” Guitarist Aaron “Orange” Cosgrove sums up the group’s ethos this way: “The New Congress is real music by real musicians.” These days, that’s saying something.

Catch the band’s act: Oct. 23, CD release party at the Fine Line Music Café; Nov. 4, B96 Homegrown release party at the Fine Line; Nov. 27, Bunkers.