What an interesting and particular collaboration. Here we have on one hand who is actually considered as one of the greatest bassist player in the rock music. I’m talking of course of Leslie Edward ‘Les’ Claypool, also notable because he is the frontman and the vocalist (obvious also the bassist) of the band Primus. On of the most appreciated and influencial too band into experimental rock, funk and progressive music of the last twenty-thirty years.
On the other one, we have Sean Lennon. The son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono born in New York City in the 1975 and through the years involved in a lot of musician and artistic project after his debut as solist with the album ‘Into the Sun’ in 1998.
So we have what it is actually called The Claypool Lennon Delirium, a project in which are involved also the American rock drummer Paulo Baldi and Mr Money Mark at the synthesizer, who you necessearly have to know because of his collaboration with the Beastie Boys.
How could we define this project? Once they called them ‘supergroup”, but Les Claypool best defined it as a musical interaction or jam and as consequence as a ‘conversation’, the deepest form of conversation possible.
Out via ATO Records last June, ‘Monolith of Phobos’ includes elements typical of psychedelic music and art and experimental rock and progressive and in substance it is a mix of what are the experiences that the two American musicians have had through the years since now.
Influenced of course by the music of the seventies, the record is pervaded by an acidity of sound typical of bands like MC5 or Blue Cheer, in some occasions the bass played by Claypool it is dominant and it really rules and defines the structures of the song (‘Captain Lariat’, ‘Mr. Wright’). Sometimes you could find in the songs an echo that reminds to the experimental episodes in british psychedelia in the sixties. ‘Bubble Burst’, ‘Cricket and The Genie (Movement I, The Delirium)’, ‘Ohmerica’ are in an evident way influenced by The Beatles (of course) and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. But the album it is not just a revival of the sixties and seventies psychedelic and acid rock. ‘There’s No Underwear In Space’, also starting from that kind of musical concept, reminds of the experimental episodes of the British pop band Blur and in the album you could smell the taste of the nineties indie music, that it is actually the musical reality from which Sean Lennon came out at the time.
Well. You could actually consider this project as something not interesting and at least, however it may appear, as it is a maistream product and in fact you’ve surely no fault in considering the things stay so. The record is too much well recorded and arranged and the sound is always so clean, too much clean that you aren’t possibly catching any emotional sense. But the songs are good. The sound it is always ‘poppy’ and catchy and perhapes this is the main reason because it makes me think of a trying of doing something vintage. Despite the art and experimental rock attitude, it is difficult to not consider this one as a pop album. Pop because it is easy-listening and it has got popular contents and it is will to be listened to a popolar and big audience. So it is. Take it or leave it. Good luck guys.
Vote: 7/10
You can also read this review at http://machchapuchchare.blogspot.it/
