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Nervous Cabaret's music can go from bawdy to euphoric and even ecstatic... very, very danceable music that's very emotionally rooted. There's a lot going on but it never fails to make you move. It has a real hardcore swing to it.

Imagine Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing with members of the Stray Cats and the Clash, only more intense, and you've got Nervous Cabaret. Elyas "KiD [SiC]" Khan's Pakistan-trained voice belts out songs about getting drunk, falling out of love and selling out over endlessly evocative coronet by Fred Wight, fierce contrabass (Matt Morandi), drums (Brian Geltner) and now they've added a second drummer. You're guaranteed to both dance and cry within half an hour.

NERVOUS CABARET's dark and sensuous music is a big sweaty mass of punk, Gypsy, jazz and dub. Frontman Elyas Khan emits throaty howls and practically spits out the dense and dramatic lyrics on the band's latest CD, Ecstatic Music for Savage Souls.

They're more loud than nervous, and don't expect the Weimar sound. Think Tom Waits as qawwali Gypsy King, backed by Joy Division with Captain Caveman clubbing a tympanum as a drum set. They're international rock stars in their native DUMBO (Brooklyn), but the rest of us are just beginning to catch on.

"Instant Lady" is a raucous racket of bawdiness and hedonism from Brooklyn, N.Y.'s fearsome Nervous Cabaret... Rather brilliant...taking the spiritual and making it gleefully profane.
** Instant Lady in Best 20 Downloads of 2005!**