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Friday Full-Length: The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Monolith of Phobos

One of the questions I regularly ask the AI search engine is whether or not Les Claypool and/or Sean Lennon have mentioned anywhere that there will be another The Claypool Lennon Delirium record. The answer, paraphrased, is both are down, it just needs to happen. Claypool has been doing interviews because his Fearless Flying Frog Brigade project is doing their first tour in two decades now and in June, and Lennon is playing guitar in his band — Claypool calls him Shiner, which is both lovely and on-brand — so Monolith of Phobos, which was the pair’s first collaboration in June 2016, feels ripe for a revisit.

First of all, 2016, right? If you live in the States, it was a year defined by weird. Kind of astonishing that it was seven years ago, but I hear that years happen when you pile up enough days, so whatever. It felt like the entire year was the election, and certainly The Claypool Lennon Delirium weren’t in a vacuum in that regard, as they showed on “Ohmerica” with voice-of-reason satire in the second half of their debut. But it was a weird time to be alive, like I imagine was 1980, and maybe one of those moments where at least for some, it felt like the timeline split and they woke up someplace they thought they knew was one thing and turned out to be another, while perhaps for others the times were nothing but consistent. Multiple worlds in a world.

The Gen-X-ribbing-Millennials in the lyrics of “Boomerang Baby” is a bit gauche by the standards of the 2020s — please direct all grievances at the Boomers, who weren’t necessarily the ones to destroy the planet but certainly did little to help our species’ cause beyond liking a few decent bands — but that song still has that keyboard solo that, if it’s not a harpsichord, it’s close enough, and in both Claypool‘s bass and Lennon‘s vocals, it’s hypnotic, so maybe its first half and some of the other tracks here feel formative in comparison to 2019’s South of Reality (discussed here), which capped the ’10s with one of the decade’s best psychedelic rock records, the tradeoff for that is a closer look at the jammy roots of the project at its inception.

Starting off atmospheric with “The Monolith of Phobos,” the album moves into the two-parter “Cricket and the Genie (Movement I, The Delirium)” and “Cricket and the Genie (Movement II, Oratorio di Cricket),” which emphasize the could-go-anywhere style of Lennon‘s guitar playing, malleable in affect, tone and purpose, able to chug along with Claypool‘s trademark slap-bass on “Breath of a Salesman” or strum acoustic in a backing layer of “Captain Lariat” a song later, whatever athe claypool lennon delirium monolith of phobos moment, a single part, calls for. Neither is overly long — “Captain Lariat” hits six minutes as the longest cut — but they give hints there and certainly elsewhere of the jams that would probably branch out live, ending, of course, with a sample of a chirping cricket as the song fades out underneath. Might be some frogs in there too, actually.

And the pair’s predilection for the bizarre, anticipating or at least being present in the oddness of the universe in which their work was arriving, and experimentalist heart shows up as well, maybe most of all on “There’s No Underwear in Space” — what George Lucas famously told a teenage Carrie Fisher when she asked for some on the set of Star Wars — with its creeping-but-not-creeping-like-“Mr. Wright” progression on guitar and various other sounds, vague blown-out speech at the end that might be Claypool, and so on. But that’s not the only showcase for it either, and it’s a context set by the wakeup noise of the intro to “The Monolith of Phobos” and throughout the “Cricket” duology as well in the vocal arrangement at the end of the second part, but it neither was nor should be a surprise that some of the material would be so identifiably Claypool‘s own since his is one of the most identifiable sounds rock of any stripe has ever produced in the 70-plus years it has existed.

Storytelling is always an essential component. As “Mr. Wright” plays out, the title character’s perverse transgressions escalate. “Cricket” has a plot. “Captain Lariat.” But Lennon takes lead vocals on “Bubbles Burst” and “Ohmerica,” with its acoustic and fuzz and keys, so the line of who wrote what and where isn’t necessarily stark, and The Claypool Lennon Delirium, as a band, are more dynamic for that. The pairing of “Ohmerica” and “Oxycontin Girl,” introduced with standalone bass and moving into a tale of addiction that feels like an update of Primus‘ “Harold on the Rocks” while going elsewhere in sound with splashes of fuzz buried in the mix, filling out the space behind the central bassline before and after the solo opens up in the middle in such a way as to feel like they were recorded in the same overdub, the same stem, whether or not they actually were.

In any case, the point stands that Monolith of Phobos has that level of attention to detail that you can get lost in if you choose, but there’s an overarching ride happening here, and the advantage of having two collaborators who are both master players, master songwriters and master performers, is that provided the egos don’t clash — and by all accounts everybody gets along well enough that Claypool and Lennon are touring together again — you’re probably going to get a work that on some level represents that mastery. Whether it’s the maddening catchiness of “Mr. Wright,” the entrancing repetitions in “Cricket and the Genie (Movement II, Oratorio di Cricket),” or the melancholy, rainy-day psychedelic flourish of “Bubbles Burst,” The Claypool Lennon Delirium remain on solid ground rhythmically and structurally regardless of how either of those things are being used at a given time.

Accordingly, and with true nerdly diligence, I will probably keep asking that robot when and if a third album might show up. Not this week, I suppose, but Claypool cycling through projects between PrimusFrog Brigade, offshoots like Duo de Twang and this and various others, plus the ever-present possibility of a new band or thing, whatever it might be, is nothing new, and hopefully the next The Claypool Lennon Delirium arrives before the machine grows intelligent enough to tell me to talk about something else.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

It was Tuesday and The Patient Mrs.’ mother had just arrived, down for an overnight from Connecticut. This week was the week in New Jersey, weather-wise. I doubt very much we’ll see its equal this year. Yesterday had a little chill, and by Tuesday afternoon the air had gotten a little hot, but taking the average between those two is where it was for most of the week and the blue sky felt like a lifeline. So when The Patient Mrs.’ mom showed up about an hour before the bus was due to come get The Pecan, I canceled school and we all went for a nice long walk in the arboretum in Morristown. I regret nothing about getting that idea or following the impulse. It was a great day.

Yesterday, The Patient Mrs. and I went to the school where The Pecan will attend kindergarten next year. We’re steamrolling toward an ADHD diagnosis probably next year for kiddo, so there have been all kinds of meetings and tests to see where/what/when the needs are and how they can best be met as real-school begins after pre-K. The resounding impression was that The Pecan is really, really, really intelligent, needs help with things like sharing and not being in charge, and will have a shared para in class next year, which is very much what we wanted. We talked a bit about gender as well, since as I’ve said here, I’m pretty sure kindergarten will be happening as a girl and until and unless we hear otherwise from The Pecan we’re proceeding from this assumption, but that will also get its own meeting. Logistics to work out, etc.

But the kid’s smart, no doubt about it. Like his mother. That has ups and downs, frankly, as smart people are more likely to be miserable and I might honestly trade a little intelligence for some happiness as regards disposition, but along with the intense guilt I feel for being a bad parent every single day — because, rest assured, I am one every single day; consistent, constant failure — I am pretty regularly astounded by some of the shit the kid comes up with, and she is at a super-fun age for stories, reading and starting to want to write her own. Maybe it’s not such a surprise I’d be into that.

There’s a bunch of stuff slated for next week, and at some point I’m going to post the podcast The Patient Mrs. and I made, but the kid’s up and we’re watching ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and it’s time for me to go swim, so I’m going to leave it there. Have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate, watch your head — I totally cried in that meeting recounting The Pecan’s March 2021 skull-cracking, by the way, so I really mean watch your head this week — and I’ll be back on Monday with a whole bunch of stuff I’m already behind on, which is how it goes. Thanks for reading.

FRM.

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