Prescient politics and great grooves

When Thievery Corporation's

Radio Retaliation

came out a little more than a year ago, its politically charged themes sounded timely, full of Bush-era anger. The Washington duo of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton - DJs, producers, writers - craft tracks anchored in trip-hop, Jamaican dub, and chilled-out electronic grooves. But they relish collaboration, and

Radio Retaliation

included cameos from Afrobeat star Femi Kuti, sitarist Anoushka Shankar, and Brazilian Seu Jorge, among many others. Its global inclusiveness was itself political.

"I think that things were interesting when we were recording, politically," Garza says, on the phone from a tour stop in Montreal. "But I think things are way more interesting now in terms of the economy and crises going on across the planet."

One of the risks of political art is that it may later seem too much a product of its time, but some of Radio Retaliation seems downright prescient. "When the bank man comes to your door / Better know you'll always be poor," Kuti sings on the anti-International Monetary Fund cut "Vampires."

"I think [the album's songs] transcend that moment," Garza says. "The thing is, right after Obama got elected, people were like, oh, we have change. But a lot of people seemed to have gone back to sleep." It's no coincidence that the album's first track is "Sound the Alarm."

Regardless, in Thievery Corporation's hands, politics are secondary to grooves. Tonight's Electric Factory show - the penultimate date of nearly a year of touring - features a 13-piece band with musicians and singers from Argentina, Guyana, Brazil, Cuba, and Jamaica, and songs in French, Farsi, Portuguese, English, and other languages. It will be a global dance party.