• Artist: The Shotgun Wedding Quintet
• Track: Bridge and Tunnel
• Producer: Ben Yonas
• Album: Tales From The Barbary Coast

Need a live-band hip-hop ensemble to play a last-minute reception gig following your hastily-planned marriage ceremony? Well, that's an oddly specific request but, as luck may have it, I've got just the band for the job: San Francisco's The Shotgun Wedding Quintet, making their Booth debut with newly-released album standout Bridge and Tunnel. Named after a local term for Bay Area partiers who live outside San Fran proper, this left-of-center selection finds instrumentalists Adam Theis, Joe Cohen and pDubL crafting an eclectic blend of synths and exotic folk guitar riffs as rhymesayer Dublin paints a sinister yet alluring lyrical portrait of his home city's nightlife. By way of warning to unwary outsiders, he spits: “I coulda told you, this city's grip will come hold you / crumple you up and then fold you / send you back across with your whole world tossed.” Has this seamy vignette left your interest piqued? More Tales From the Barbary Coast await on the Shotgun Wedding Quintet's latest full-length, released August 18, and available now from record stores and online retailers.