There’s one big problem with the new album from the veteran funk sextet Lettuce. Sweet and sunny, Cook is a warm-weather record, perfect for a backyard cookout or a lazy drive with the windows down – not a soundtrack for chilly days. Still, the band’s smooth amalgam of feelgood styles generates more than enough heat to keep the winter blues at bay.
Launched in Boston in the 1990s, Lettuce released its first album in 2002 and has been chugging along ever since, with four of the six current members present since the beginning, and the newest joining way back in 2011. Balancing the polish that comes with this kind of sustained teamwork and the hunger for a wide variety of earthy sounds, Cook feels surprisingly fresh, despite its familiar ingredients.
