Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
John Knox discovers an eclectic collection of sonic collages
ATO Records
Released: 01.05.26
The Claypool Lennon Delirium sound exactly how you would imagine: Les Claypool’s freak-funk bass thump and Residents-style storytelling mashed-up with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band-era psychedelia and the unmistakable spectre of Sean Lennon’s father haunting the harmonies. The result is a kind of ‘prog-adelia’, or so the band claim.
This, their third album, is a collage of songs, kaleidoscopic sound collages and glorp-glorp swampy weirdness, loosely tethered to a rather on-the-nose rock-opera concept: a sentient AI bent on destroying the world in pursuit of efficiency through paperclips, with salvation resting in the hands of a Ministry of Manatees and a mythical Parrot-Ox. Its deliberately absurd, yet you’d struggle to piece that narrative together from hearing the music alone. Instead, the concept functions more as a lens for the listener to hear through.
Without a clear narrative thread, the album can feel adrift, meandering and never quite settling, split between two modes: Lennon-led pop songs with feel-good melodies of sweetness and clarity, and Claypool’s more fractured, hallucinatory excursions built from the rhythms of springs, dissonant loops and his signature, queasy low end. The tension provides interest, but a lack of cohesive direction leaves the whole piece feeling unfinished.
There are moments of genuine charm and invention here, but little that truly surprises me as a long time Claypool fan. An intriguing curiosity, one that ultimately, for better or worse, does exactly what you would expect. An enjoyable, if predictable, trip.
