Rock – Page 2 – 7th Level Music

Review: Killing Joke – Extremities: The Albini Demos and Live Beginnings ’88

It’s barely spring and we already have one of the best reissues of the year – Killing Joke‘s Extremities: The Albini Demos and Live Beginnings ’88.

Way back in the mid-1980s, guitarist Geordie Walker and drummer Martin Atkins linked up with legendary producer Steve Albini in his Chicago studio and there recorded mixes and demos for what became known as the “Black Cassette” and would end up in different variations on KJ’s 1990 album Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions.

Beginning with the demo version of “Money,” (later known as “Money Is Not Our God”) the heavy, fuzzy bass from Paul Raven hits you right away while Walker’s guitars sound like pirate transmissions from a hidden kingdom under the earth. The “Unreleased” demo has a wicked drum beat and guitar riffs that would later inspire scores of shoegaze bands. “Scrape / North of the Border” (The “Scrape” title was later dropped for the album release.) gets you moving with his wonky guitar sounds and undeniably great beat. The “Reflex mix” of “Money” rounds out Side A of the album, turning the song into a warped, wild version and clearly showing how much KJ influenced Nirvana.

Side B is a rare recording of a secret show from Birmingham, England on December 20, 1988 that happened to be Atkins’ first live gig with the band, and it also includes tracks that would appear on Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions two years later. Jaz Coleman‘s vocals and keyboards are bonkers right out of the gate on “Extremities,” installing panic and power into the crowd. Walker’s squealing, seemingly melted, feedback-heavy guitar only adds to the chaos.

“The Fanatic” somehow sounds both distant and in-your-face at the same time. Coleman sometimes mutters and sometimes roars. Walker steps back and then charges forward. Atkins and Raven click together and keep it from becoming too frantic, but just barely managing it. “Wake up!” yells Coleman after introducing “Intravenous.” How anyone could have been sleepy-eyed during this show is beyond me, because KJ were shaking the entire venue by this point. “Intravenous” only gives you a couple moments to catch your breath during its pounding drums, high-pitched guitar feedback moments, and rolling dam waters bass.

“You see, we’re the laughingstocks…” Coleman says as the last track, “Beautiful Dead,” begins with his spooky synths and voice before his bandmates pummel the audience (and us over thirty years later) with pure force. There’s a neat moment when it almost sounds like Coleman is playing his own song on his synthesizers while Walker, Raven, and Atkins are doing their own thing and it still works quite well. The funky groove of the song during the verses is also a neat switch-up around the blast furnace choruses.

Killing Joke proved through songs like these, and many albums still to come, that they weren’t laughingstocks. They were in on the joke, knew the joke, and exposed the joke. These recordings are a great find for fans of not only them, but also post-punk and industrial music.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Dan from Discipline PR.]

Jesca Hoop stirs up a “Big Storm” with her new single.

One month from today, Jesca Hoop will release her new LP Long Wave Home. The seventh solo album from the California-born, Manchester-based songwriter took shape amidst a period of both personal and geopolitical upheaval: a web of schisms that seemed to reflect one another as they unfolded. It is the first album Hoop produced by herself, and it marks both a fresh start and a deepening of her extensive, multifaceted discography.

In the past, Hoop had worked with a roster of seasoned, brilliant producers: John Parish (PJ Harvey, Tracy Chapman); Tony Berg (Taylor Swift, boygenius); and Blake Mills, (Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes). Hoop learned from all of these partnerships. As she embarked on her seventh album, she was ready to apply that knowledge from the cockpit.

Hoop recorded Long Wave Home in studios around the United Kingdom. She asked her collaborator Jesse D. Vernon to arrange accompaniments for her songs, then set out in a camper van to meet session musicians and begin tracking. Her travels took her to The Shed in London, Empire Sound on the Isle of Wight, and J&J Studios in Bristol. Throughout the process, she worked closely with engineers Tim Thomas (Bright Eyes, British Sea Power) and Leo Abrahams (Belle & Sebastian, Frightened Rabbit) to foster the sound she envisioned for the album. Under her careful hand, a populous, dynamic sound emerged.

So far Hoop has released two singles from her new LP, “Caravan” and “Designer Citizen.” Today Hoop is announcing a new run of tour dates and sharing a third single from the record, a track called “Big Storm.”

Hoop says of the track:

“There was a moment, many years ago, when I was ready to ditch everything—everyone I knew and everything I was doing. I gave away all my possessions, keeping only the essentials. I sold my car. I bought a plane ticket. The plan was to leave without notice. Then the biggest storm in recent history blew my getaway plan to bits. It grounded all planes and halted travel. I was forced to face my life. Myself.

The storm taught me there is no cheat code for life—no easy way out. At the same time, my life—my happiness—is my responsibility. Mine and only mine.”

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Lambrini Girls punch rich elitists in the gut with “Cult of Celebrity.”

Brighton’s own Lambrini Girls, the explosive duo of Phoebe Lunny (vocals/guitar) and Selin Macieira (bass), share their new single ‘Cult of Celebrity’. From its opening guitar lick, the duo’s new song is a relentless, thrashing indictment of the dark underbelly and backdoor dealings of the world’s global elites that has been exposed in recent years.

On the new track the band say: “The age old tale, of selling your soul to the devil has been fabled accounts of high society for years. However due to recent events come to light- it turns out that the elite are very much actually, the devil incarnate, baby eating, pedos. What a fucking surprise! They had no souls to sell in the first place.”

‘The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters’ Antonio Gramsci (courtesy of Lambrini Girls)

The single is also accompanied by a music video directed by London-based filmmaker and director Harv Frost (The Last Dinner Party, Laufey).

Watch / Listen to ‘Cult of Celebrity’ HERE

Tour Dates

Sun 05 Apr 26 – Paaspop, Schijndel – Netherlands

Sat 11 Apr 26 – Coachella Valley, Indigo CA – United States

Sat 18 Apr 26 – Coachella Valley, Indigo CA – United States

Tue 21 Apr 26 – Variety Playhouse, Atlanta GA – United States

Wed 22 Apr 26 – The Orange Peel, Asheville NC – United States

Fri 24 Apr – 26 Warsaw, Brooklyn NY – United States SOLD OUT

Sun 26 Apr 26 – Paradise Rock Club, Boston MA – United States SOLD OUT

Mon 27 Apr 26 – Théâtre Beanfield, Montreal QC – Canada

Tue 28 Apr 26 – The Concert Hall, Toronto ON – Canada

Thu 30 Apr 26 – Metro, Chicago IL- United States SOLD OUT

Fri 01 May 26 Majestic Theatre, Detroit MI – United States

Sat 02 May 26 – The Vogue, Indianapolis IN – United States

Mon 04 May 26 – Delmar Hall, St. Louis MO – United States

Tue 05 May 26 – The Granada Theater, Lawrence KS – United States

Thu 21 May 26 – Bearded Theory, Derbyshire – United Kingdom

Sat 23 May 26 – Dot to Dot, Bristol – United Kingdom

Sun 24 May 26 – Dot to Dot, Nottingham – United Kingdom

Sat 06 Jun 26 – Primavera Sound, Barcelona – Spain

Fri 12 Jun 26 – Bonnaroo, Manchester TN) – United States

Sun 14 Jun 26 – Warped Tour, Washington DC- United States

Thu 25 Jun 26 – Patrick Henry Village, Heidelberg – Germany

Fri 26 Jun 26 – Vainstream Rockfest, Munster – Germany

Thu 09 Jul 26 – Musilac, Aix-Les Bains – France

Fri 10 Jul 26 – 2000trees Festival – Gloucestershire – United Kingdom

Mon 13 Jul 26 – Les Nuits De Fourviere, Lyon – France

Fri 17 Jul 26 – Malakoff Rock Festival, Nordfjordeid – Norway

Sat 18 Jul 26 – Bukta, Tromso – Norway – Norway

Fri 31 Jul 26 – All Together Now, Waterford – Ireland

Fri 07 Aug 26 – Boardmasters, Newquay – United Kingdom

Tue 11 Aug 26 – Sziget Festival, Budapest – Hungary

Thu 13 Aug 26 – Oya Festival, Oslo – Norway

Fri 14 Aug 26 – Way Out West, Gothenburg – Sweden

Sun 16 Aug 26 – Flow Festival – Helsinki – Finland

Fri 21 Aug 26 – Pukkelpop, Hasselt – Belgium

Sat 29 Aug 26 – Rock en Seine, Paris – France

Tickets available HERE

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Amy at After Hours PR.]

Review: The Shits – Diet of Worms

Looking at that album cover, you might think at first glance that you were in for a folk record, or maybe a “goth country” album, but then you notice the title is Diet of Worms (possibly after the assembly in which Martin Luther was told to recant his writings and views or be labeled as a heretic – spoiler alert from the 16th century: He didn’t.) and the band’s name is The Shits and now you’re even more intrigued.

Then the opening dissonance of the first track, “In a Hell,” arrives and you’re locked in because you want to hear where this is going. The snarling vocals arrive while drums, bass, and guitars circle around you like angry hounds and you’re thinking, “Okay, let’s do this.” This goes on for over seven minutes and ratchets up the power for the whole album. You look at the album cover again and begin to think something bad has happened (or is still happening) in that house / barn…and, by the way, is the whole area on fire?

The Shits seem to believe the whole world is on fire, judging by the rumbling rage in every track. The guitars on “Tarrare” almost sound like the repetitive ramblings of a madman. “Then You’re Dead” sounds like a Stooges B-side covered in ashes and played on a turntable with a vulture perched next to it and using its beak for the needle. The bass line and drums hits on it are relentless.

Speaking of bass, the bass notes on “Change My Ways” are thick as tar. I think the song is about being pressured to change from every angle of society in this modern world: Eat this, do this workout, sleep in this position, take this supplement, listen to these podcasts, read this book, invest your money with me! It never ends unless you change another thing – the desire to change at all. Could The Shits be hiding a Zen lesson in the distortion and shouts?

There could be another one hidden in “Joyless Satisfaction.” The title alone could allude to the emptiness that often accompanies materialism and attachment. We buy and buy and buy and so often have remorse afterwards. The thrill of the purchase is soon replaced by the dread of having yet another thing to move, dust, or take up space. The same goes for doom-scrolling, influencer idolizing, and so many other things that take up our mind-space. The track’s guitar riffs are all jagged and rusty and likely to harm you if you’re not careful.

The title track is a gritty, nervous, writhing thing with an abrupt ending that catches you off-guard. “Thank You for Being a Friend” has a groove that, believe it or not, reminds me of Thin Lizzy. It’s not a cover of the Golden Girls theme song (which would be amazing), but I think is about both true and false friends, and how sometimes it’s difficult to figure out which is which. The album ends with the menacing “Three O’Clock in the Morning.” It feels like the sensation of stumbling home after a drunken brawl in a Waffle House parking lot, or the dread of waking up for another early shift, or coming back from one that ran late, or the lonely dread that sometimes creeps in when you wake up for no apparent reason. It yells and spits at you, creeps around you, pulls at you, and generally unnerves you.

The whole album does. That’s what it’s supposed to do, and why The Shits made it. It’s as unsettling as the album cover or being handed a bowl of worms to eat. It’s meant to shake you up and shake you out of the trap you don’t even know is around you.

One final note: You can’t be a band called “The Shits” and not be a solid, damn good band. It just wouldn’t work. You’d be written off as a joke band.

The Shits are no joke.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Dan at Discipline PR.]

Las Cruxes’ new single is stone “Frio.”

Beneath the rollicking exterior of Yayo Trujillo’s Las Cruxes lies a tender heart. His Omaha-based solo project-turned-collective will release its third full-length, Las Cruxes, out April 24 via Conor Oberst’s Million Stars label. Today, Trujillo shares the single “Frio,” which explores the necessity of sadness atop distorted fretwork and a chugging beat. Spanish-language lyrics probe the desire to scream until nothing comes out while hoping you said the right things. It is cathartic and human.

On the track, Las Cruxes’ Yayo Trujillo shares: “‘Lo sé, lo sé, que nunca seré feliz, te prometo, siento que me muero,’ is how I feel every single day. The dreadful feeling of putting on a smile for the person you love. The mirror doesn’t talk back.
We need sadness in our lives.”

As a native of Los Angeles, music guides Yayo Trujillo. “It all started hanging out with my older brother, who used to play traditional boleros to serenade his girlfriend,” he recalls. “I was lucky enough to tag along.” With a notable following in Mexico and Latin America, his Las Cruxes project has evolved in moves between Mexico City, San Francisco, and Omaha. He also spent years in Pastilla, a Latin rock institution on Aztlan Records and BMG.

As a Nebraska-based artist, it seems inevitable that Trujillo would encounter hometown hero Conor Oberst. After gigging at his bar, Pageturners Lounge, he signed a deal with Million Stars — the label now issuing Las Cruxes’ self-titled third full-length. The album embraces straightforwardness, favoring live performances captured on classic consoles with vintage microphones. The sessions were led by Bright Eyes affiliates Taylor Hollingsworth (Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band) and Adam Roberts at ARC Studios. It bears traces of new wave, shoegaze, and lofi experimentation.

Across 12 cuts, Spanish vocals crest over fuzzy melodies and pounding grooves. “The writing process was the same as everything else — very ‘let’s do this,’” Trujillo reflects. “No thought to it — just very natural, free flowing.” Opener “El último” unfolds with a driving bassline that escalates in a raucous chorus. “No creo que pueda olvidarte / No creo / No creo,” Trujillo repeats atop rickety fretwork. On “Déjà vu,” searing riffs interrupt brooding verses. Closer “By Frank” is the only English language piece, propelled by shakers and woozy organs. “I know it’s a lie they’ll never really tell you / I know it’s lust / I’ll never really tell you,” he proclaims in the refrain. Las Cruxes weaves macabre insistence with themes of mental collapse and romance.

Las Cruxes doubles as a solo practice and fluid collective, both on record and live. “I write everything, but I do it thinking about who is in the band at that moment — who’s wearing the Las Cruxes suit that week,” Trujillo muses. This time around, he tracked the majority of the instruments himself, though a handful of peers were invited to contribute. In addition to a cast of Omaha locals, Californian Ellie English (L.A. Witch) appears on drums. Jeffrey Davies (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) and Jorge Vilchis (La Gusana Ciega) were tapped for guitar. The record channels simplicity at its finest.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Review: Stuck – Optimizer

Chicago’s Stuck approached their new album, Optimizer, with the sense that they and the world at large are in the passenger seat of an out of control car. Things are spinning out of control, racing toward disaster, and we’re all trying to optimize our social media profiles, bodies, hobbies, food, and minds.

“It’s hard to know what you want, and to know it is worse,” says lead singer / guitarist Greg Obis at the beginning of Optimizer‘s opening track, “Totally Vexed.” He’s unsure what to do about not only his life, but things in general, just like the rest of us (“Take a look around. Everybody’s down.” / “You don’t know what you want.”). The song bristles with post-punk nervousness and Tim Green‘s pulse-slightly pounding-in-your-temples beats. “Instakill” is a song about fitness influencers and the weird world of fitness culture. It sound like some of Devo‘s earlier, punkier tracks with its strange, popping synths, David Algrim‘s robot bass lines, the slightly tortured guitar riffs, and the lyrics poking fun at people striving to be like everyone else.

“Sicko” is about subjecting ourselves to the relentless grind of not only work, but also maintaining social media profiles and projecting fictionalized best versions of ourselves. Algrim’s bass hits hard on “Deadlift,” another track about body image and our troubling relationships with it. “Less Is More” roars with punk fury. “Fire, Man” smirks at the emptiness of a lot of rock music nowadays.

“Net Negative” brings early Wavves tracks to mind with its catchy guitar hooks and snarled vocals like “I think that it’s funny connection’s tearing us apart.” “It Isn’t” is a stark look at how we’re being deceived every day, either by people, algorithms, or media (social and otherwise). “Punchline” has Stuck (and the rest of us) looking for some kind of, any kind of meaning to all of this chaos around us. It’s the track that reminds me most of Gang of Four (“You know something I don’t. A universal truth. I’m not in on the joke.”) through its solid bass and straight-to-the-gut lyrics.

The album closes with “GG.” No, it’s not a reference to G.G. Allin. “On a pitch black road, don’t know where it goes,” Obis sings on it. We’re back to the out-of-control car metaphor and how Obis feels like he’s holding on for dear life as he grieves over how a loved one has changed and seems intent on plunging them both to their doom.

Or maybe Stuck feel like most of the country has changed and is content to drive us all off a cliff rather than admit they’re afraid, or wrong, or rather afraid of being wrong. We’re all tempted and told to optimize our lives, produce more, consume more, and ignore the billionaire boots grinding us all.

Optimizer fades out with the same distortion that fades in the record. It’s a loop, spinning and spinning until we decide to take action and give it a rest — just like the traps we’re falling into every day. Stuck have held up the mirror. We have to accept what we see in it. Acceptance can lead to action, and that is optimizing.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

The Shits “Thank You for Being a Friend” with their new single.

What’s the point of the howl of string to speaker, the hammering of stick-on skin? Is it transcendence, elevating the human spirit by catharsis in sound? Or is it summoning chaos, a purgatory in which to bask in all that’s unclean, the better to feel alive?

Why not both? Because that’s what’s on offer on Diet Of Worms, the second Rocket release by The Shits, Leeds via Newcastle’s titans of disgust and deliverance. This is a feast for the senses in the worst way possible – primal rock boiled down to its essence and flung full in your face. Using repetition, tortured vocal invective and heads-down intensity as blunt instruments, these eight tracks are an unprecedented torrent of acidic salvation. Whilst lurking somewhere on the decadence-destruction axis between the nihilism of prime Stooges and the bloody blackout of Brainbombs, Diet Of Worms is possessed of a legitimately uncompromising hostility that both elevates and debases it to co-ordinates unknown. Discussing today’s drop of the new single, ‘Thank You For Being A Friend‘, the vocalist of The Shits, Callum Howe notices: “The Shits are driving down the sleazy streets of West Yorkshire. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. You can’t stop us, we do this cos we love it.”

There are revelations here in the riffage and the rancour, even if they are the kind that occur in the bleary miasma of the lock-in, or witnessing the streetlight blur of the subsequent stagger home. Even more single-minded and remorseless than the band’s Rocket debut ‘You’re A Mess’, this is a record that demands full immersion. Whether it’s ‘Then You’re Dead’ hammering on a pulverizing garage-stinking riff until it begs for mercy, or ‘Change My Ways’, whose Creedence-In-Hell swagger and lurch is that of abjection transmuted into joy, this is psychedelia forcibly removed from its comfort zone of pastiche, and thrust into a bad-trip realm of the vivid and nightmarish.

But rarely has the process of making beauty and horror indivisible seemed like so much fun. If Werner Herzog was right, and the only harmony in the universe is that of overwhelming and collective murder, then The Shits are the true music of the spheres.

Pre-order Diet of Worms coming out April 3: Digital via Bandcamp here. And LP directly from Rocket Recordings here.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Dan at Discipline PR.]

Review: Carbon Decoy – Crush the Sun

I’m intrigued with Carbon Decoy‘s name. It’s a play on “carbon decay,” the process used for carbon dating, and the skull on the cover of their new album, Crush the Sun, indicates a version of decay, but they chose “decoy.” Their name seems to indicate being a stand-in for the decayed, or for the dead perhaps.

I mean, the heavy doom riffs they play certainly help back this theory. “The Trip” opens the album with a gas pedal-stomper that makes you want to hit the open road, pick up a weird, sexy hitchhiker, fight a band of cultists, and discover a doctor’s bag full of loot at the end of the road. Earl Mudd‘s guitars on “Castle East” sometimes sound like they’re straining to hold back undead hordes attacking said castle, and the agonized wails from drummer / vocalist Casey Rowe amplifying the image.

Jared Jordan‘s bass is spread thick across “Icarus,” and Rowe’s drums reflect the surely panicked, euphoric, and then panicked again heartbeat of the doomed man who flew too close to the sun. The swagger and groove of “Forest of Lies” is outstanding. It’s a swampy, sludgy one amidst the doom, and I’m all for it. “Sirens” goes back into mythological lands (and waters, in this case) as Rowe bemoans that he’s being beckoned by physical and metaphorical monsters. Speaking of monsters, the trio hammers away on “The Wraith,” in which they apparently try to banish such a spirit with the power of crushing riffs and pounding beats. The album ends with “Ghost Town,” this time with Jordan on vocals and the sounds of wind blowing through a spaghetti western that takes place near a haunted coal mine that probably houses some sort of horrible creature of the souls of a hundred trapped miners.

For most of its runtime, Crush the Sun feels heavy enough to do just that. Carbon Decoy’s created one of the best doom albums of the year so far.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Ksu at Discipline PR.]

Review: The Fake Friends – Let’s Not Overthink This

The Fake Friends‘ new album, Let’s Not Overthink This, starts off with the cry of “No truce!” on “Ministry of Peace.” They’re coming to shake things up, kick down walls, and slap you out of it.

Matthew Savage sings / shouts through the opening track, calling out everyone addicted to constant stimulation (“You got your hand glued to a screen hoping that’ll give you meaning.”) as Felix Crawford-Legault and Luca Santilli‘s guitars roar all over the place. “Sucker Born Every Minute” echoes Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs-style rock with it’s hooky chorus, Bradley Cooper-Graham‘s bright, almost go-go synths, and Savage’s “shout them with us!” lyrics about people who can’t get out of their own damn way.

“The Way She Goes” seems to be about co-dependency, and the frantic, angular guitar chords reflect the fractured patterns in such a relationship (“You want it, I need it. I got it, you want it.”). “Control” follows this theme (“Don’t look so defeated. You only said what you mean. Too tired to keep fighting, it’s tearing us at the seams.”).

“Five Star Review” is a quirky, funny, possibly fictional tale of the history / takedown of the band told by friends and crew. “Living the Dream” is a rousing track, with great call-and-response vocals and heavy drumming from Michael Tomizzi. “Backstreet’s Back Pt. II” has this nervous tension to it that gets under your skin.

“HyperConnection” has Savage looking for something, anything, in common with a potential lover but “Your favorite books are way too long.” and “I’ll never get what you said to me. I can’t speak in astrology. What the fuck is a Capricorn?” Answer: “It’s a horse. It’s a horse!” On “If It Happens,” Savage admits that he’s doing the hard work to repair a relationship even though he knows it’s fruitless (“You know it won’t matter how much I do. It’s all in my head.”).

“Dance on My Grave” has perhaps Michael Kamps‘ funkiest bass groove on the entire record. It carries the whole song and will get you dancing, on graves or atop other things (tables, bars, desks, crosswalks, car hoods, etc.). The album ends with the simple, brutally funny “Good Friends,” in which the whole band sings about “friends” who are so miserable it’s exhausting (“I forget just how happy I can be when you’re not around.”). You have to wonder if the intended recipient of the song got the message.

The album’s title refers to not only the band’s creative process but also hides a Zen lesson. Alan Watts said, “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” We often get stuck in our own heads, and The Fake Friends are here to snap us out of it by whacking us with the Zen stick that is this record.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Chad at No Rules PR!]

Review: L’Ira Del Baccano – The Praise of Folly

You know you’re in for an interesting experience with an album when looking at the cover makes you think, “Wait…Am I high?”

L’Ira Del Baccano‘s The Praise of Folly combines prog, stoner, desert, doom, psych, and whatever the hell is going on with the chicken woman, wasp-man, and nightmarish elephant-praying mantis hybrid playing instruments on the cover.

Part one of the title track instantly reminded me of Rush if they leaned heavier into their harder material. It’s a nearly thirteen-minute journey into cosmic realms that defy any kind of description. The guitars alternately soar and roar at the right times, and the drums are like guiding spirits through a strange land. It crawls / oozes into doom metal by the end and then shifts into desert rock for part two of the title track.

The weird synths of “Stigma”, and the chugging horror film guitars, remind me of Goblin tracks from the early 1980s. About halfway through the song, it becomes a grooving, rocking psych-rock track with tight drumming and a slick bass line.

The closing track, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” hits hard and wild at first and then turns into something you might hear ahead of Galactus’ approach to your planet.

L’Ira Del Baccano have said that they didn’t tweak The Praise of Folly much. They wanted it to draw in the listener and be as much like a live performance as possible. A good amount of it is improvised, which is damn impressive when you hear it. The album is an immersive experience that leaves you feeling like the album cover looks – weird, expanded, and spacey.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Angie and NRV Promotion.]