First Impressions: Blue Lambency Downward
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When I awoke this morning to find that Kayo Dot’s highly-anticipated third album, Blue Lambency Downward, was streaming online, I drank a glass of orange juice and went off to school. Gradually, over those hours spent daydreaming, the possibility that the album could actually be good creeped into my head. I finally got home and started listening, and wasn’t disappointed; The first three songs present a somewhat fresh and different sound, combining chamber elements of Sixty Metonymies with Kayo Dot’s more trippy clean sections.
When “The Sow Submits” starts playing, something seems to go horribly awry; instead of carefully (and well) executed pieces, I am hearing awkward wind wheels of sound. Seemingly unrelated fragments of songs pop in and back out, drawing comparison to John Zorn at his worst. Toby Driver even manages to pull off some of his most obnoxious vocal performances; whoever informed him that he is capable of singing in higher registers must be playing an extremely cruel joke.
As if to apologize for the turdfecta, Kayo Dot close Blue Lambency Downward with one of their best songs to date – “Symmetrical Arizona”. Driver’s flirtations with experimental structures makes the most sense here, as a wandering solos give way to epic string convulsions and loose, pounding drums. Unlike most of the others, it actually builds and goes somewhere, and is musically interesting without being musically retarded.
57% of this album is great.
