• Title: “Shine Your Face”
• Label: World Records
• Performance: 8 p.m. Saturday
• Where: CSPS, 1103 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
• Tickets: $15 advance, $18 at the door, through (319) 364-1580 or www.iowatix.com
• Information: www.legionarts.org and www.mrsomethingsomething.com

Shine Your Face” is an artful blend of something serious with something lively. Just what you’d expect from Mr. Something Something, a Toronto band that has been pairing dance beats with social causes and eco-activism since 2003.

CD REVIEW

The group will be kicking up dust onstage at CSPS in Cedar Rapids at 8 p.m. Saturday. That’s a good thing. A very good thing. So put on your dancing shoes and go. I guarantee you won’t be sitting in your seat very long.

All eight songs on the new CD grab you from their opening Afrobeat pulses and reel you in with crisp, blistering horns and lyrics that tug at your sense of wanting to right so many wrongs.

“The Antidote” sets the tone, with infectious, bright rhythms. You know immediately you’ve come across something special. The first words from lead vocalist Johan Hultqvist sum up the spirit of the project:

“When the news is bad I need you to remind me that the urge to create beauty can’t be contained.”

Even with lyrics that mirror the horrors of war, the ache in an old man’s heart and the need to affect change, the music is jubilant and celebratory.

Each track builds

on the fusion of Afrobeat and jazz, with just a hint of pop and layers of complicated syncopated rhythms. Sometimes other voices join Hultqvist with harmony, but often they just echo the melody in an almost haunting way.

The razor-sharp precision of the staccato horn line in “Why, Why, Why” demonstrates how extraordinarily gifted these musicians are.

This is a band to follow.

•  Best track: “Through the Dirt.” This mostly instrumental track begins with a raw, primal percussion, then adds fluegelhorn, tenor and baritone saxophones, trumpet and vocalizations, all the while maintaining an improvised feel until it flows seamlessly into the urban call to action of “What Are You Waiting For?” Good question.

– DIANA NOLLEN, THE GAZETTE