Cranium Pie - Mechanisms, Part 1

7.5 - England - 2011

Man, this is a frustrating record. Musically, it's a well nigh perfect slice of retro-psychedelia. Lots of chunky, exploratory fuzz guitar solos, churning organs and mellotrons, thick drum grooves, and just great tunes. The recording is superlative: it has a fantastic early 70s retro sound, yet it still sounds good to twenty-first century ears (rather like the work of Dungen). The problem is that it is also a bonkers concept album about some nonsense involving post-apocalyptic lobsters building a new world without machines (or something -- I can't quite, nor be bothered to, work it out). As such, the record is filled with all sorts of stupid narration that overlays and intrudes upon the otherwise fantastic music. Ostensibly intended to be a bit of a joke, this "story" has all the sophomoric silliness of a twelve year old who has just discovered Monty Python. Without the jokes. It'd be bad enough if it made this fine psych-prog into a comedic send-up of the genre (rather like what Zappa did with late 60s psychedelia, but probably more like Neil's Heavy Concept Album), but mainly it's just not funny. Whereas Zappa's often childish attempts at humour at least had a satirical edge, this is just twee British silliness for the sake of being British, twee, and silly, and it is simply extremely irritating. It's like someone painted a very nice picture and then took a giant steaming shit on it, 'cause, you know, we're just larking about here, mate. A shame, really: an entirely instrumental version of this album would've scored an 11.