Style: Indie prog rock; compare to Yes, The Who, the Flaming Lips
Top tracks: “A Night and a Day,” “Go Supersonic,” “Contain Thyself”
Defying categorization by way of blitzing in and out of uncountable musical genres, Pepe Deluxe’s debut for Asthmatic Kitty is a head-spinning “esoteric pop opera,” as the band describes it. Strange allusions to the Noah’s Ark story (“All the fauna with two horns / He forgot the unicorns”) keep the lyrical content interesting; Pepe Deluxe says it’s based on A Dweller on Two Planets, Frederick Oliver’s quirky fantasy novel about Atlantis. But the music is the real star of this spectacle. ’50s surf rock, ’60s spy film jazz percussion, ’70s space-prog echo effects, ’80s synth pop and ’90s alt-rock come together with 2012 production style for an album that sounds like everything and nothing ever heard before.
Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
