by Stephen Kennedy / April 7, 2022
Album Review
There are bands out there, lurking in the shadows, or even waddling about in the bright sunshine, that you’ve never heard of. And often, this is for a very good reason. And there are other bands, also hiding in semi-obscurity, that seem inexplicably to inhabit these spaces, that when you hear them, the mantra is always the same – “how are they not huge”. LEGENDARY PINK DOTS are one such collective, having come together in 1768, invented time travel and PINK FLOYD, released tons of stuff, toured the globe and a few outlying planets, while still remaining one of the best kept secrets in the creative arts. And here they are, post-plague, still quietly doing what they do, still relevant, still awesome, and still hiding in semi-obscurity.
From the off, you are thrown into a dizzying whirl of psychedelia, skittery percussion, and a darkly sinister mix of PORCUPINE TREE and GONG. ‘This Is The Museum’ is a song for now, part dream, part nightmare, a claustrophobic embrace that’s at once loose and then tight. ‘There Be Monsters’ has a more English pastoral feel to it, if you discount the lyrics which catapult this into less of a rolling hillside and more of a dark, woodland path. Silence, spaces, a calm and observant elegance soaks through much of the work here, and it makes for a whole that is both beautiful and deeply disturbing. It’s politically spot-on too, ‘Cruel Brittania’ dictates the follies of our time with an aged wisdom and wit, pointing decidedly at the foolishness of the political elite, and ‘Hands Face Space’ is as sharply paranoid and bonkers as the whole of the last 18 months combined.
‘Postcards From Home’ is so gentle it barely exists, spidery and trippy, and ‘Tripping On My Nightmares’ continues the meander through a sleepy landscape, suggesting life itself is the only drug required to observe the absurdity of human existence. And this wobbles off into infinity on final track ‘Nirvana For Zeroes’, which feels like being trapped in a snow-globe that someone won’t stop shaking, a surreal, disjointed tumble through a muddled microcosm.
LEGENDARY PINK DOTS have not so much released an album here, as a complete experience, a set of sinister, shimmering vignettes, reflecting, distracting, recording and distorting the last two years and the bizarre nature of our existence within this, and our relationships with one another throughout it. ‘The Museum Of Human Happiness’ is a document of our resilience, stupidity, and fear, and it seems to sit on some higher shelf, looking down without judging, just recording and shaking its sad and wise old head, seeing what we need to see, hoping we can get there.
