"Like I Say (I runaway)" is the sort of song that one thinks they've might have heard a million times, when in fact they've never heard it at all, in the same way that genius feels obvious in hindsight.
"Schedule I," much like its parent album, is an unadulterated expression of Norman Sann's sharp, consistently refreshing approach to the rap game. Even when tackling topics as well-documented in the genre sphere as attraction or popularity, Sann never falters in wielding language like a saber, with a keen command of wordplay refined to an acute edge.
While one hopes in light of it's rediscovery that somewhere, somehow there might still be more great music waiting to be found, buried in the annals of time. That said, should this indeed be the last word of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to time immemorial, then its a fitting, if quiet, one - no great Requiem Mass or seminal Opera Buffa, just one last little treat from one of the most effortlessly luminous musical imaginations in recorded history.
"Hymn to Virgil" mines elements from almost as many musical idioms as its source material did characters from classical myth. It evokes a cavernous yet dense atmosphere thick as an arboreal mist and heavy as six feet of soil, and from that fertile sonic ground springs something that sounds like indie folk gone dark pop gone movie score.
"Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose" is at it's core a classic-sounding chunk of tuneful, piano-and-guitar-driven melodicism, underscored by a colorful and ever-present orchestral accompaniment. The phrase "Beatlesque" immediately spills out to describe this particular union of elements, though "Accidental Dose" owes much, if not more, to later additions in that particular musical idiom the Fab Four helped to define. Tillman's soulful vocal is more Joe Cocker than McCartney, and song's almost playful arrangement recalls something that could be found on Nilsson Schmilsson as much as it does, say, "I Am The Walrus."
Within its five minute runtime, "Phantom Island" weaves an odyssey of sonic and sensory ecstasy around a vision of topical (and tropical) madness in a way that's immediately exciting, endlessly compelling, and, ultimately, highly listenable. King Gizzard haven proven once again that there is no aural territory on which they're unable to plant their own indelible mark, and that not even the might of a full orchestra can drown out a sound that's quintessentially Gizz.
"Roll The Credits" makes an absolute monster of a groove out of what, upon closer inspection, turns out to be relatively few elements. ...That said, the sum of these parts is positively colossal, bounding forward with an unimpeachably soulful stride.
Receiving particular acclaim following the release of 2021's album Ignorance, The Weather Station has spent the intervening years refining a particular blend of indie, folk, and jazz, through to their newly released record Humanhood. "Mirror," the album's third track and most recent single, epitomizes that style, just as its accompanying video realizes it into a wider spectrum of the senses.
Propelled forward by a steady, demure drum groove and rounded out by silky-smooth bass licks and vibrant keys, the various elements of "Set Your Spirit Free" weave a light-as-air, jazz-style tapestry in which every individual thread feels like lead line unto itself, while remaining inherently laced to the others in service of the greater whole.
On "Reincarnated," past and present, characters and archetypes, author and invention all blend together from verse to verse and scene to scene, shifting into each other with the logic of a dream.
"You Got Me Searching " is a song deeply woven into the sort of well-worn blues-rock vestments that White dons like old leather. It's breakneck pace and high-octane delivery, however, dissuade any notions of recognition from devolving into disregard, and its vintage tendencies never hinder the track's raw energy from grabbing the listener by the metaphorical throat.
While the original "Love Insurrection" was in and of itself a trippy, funky feather in Primal Scream's cap, Black Science Orchestra's take is a welcome, nostalgic trip back to the sounds that brought both artists to the fore. More than that, it's also proof that regardless of disparities in time or genre, there's something irresistible at the core of Primal Scream's sound that is immediately and distinctly theirs from iteration to iteration.