Starving Weirdos — Rolled in the Midst of Never-Ceasing Currents Flo

Despite their name and whimsically long, complicated titles, this astonishing work by Starving Weirdos offers serious moods, artful song structures, and absolutely epic musicality that should appeal to anyone into adventurous sound. For the most part, the record is a harrowing, unsettling trip through carefully layered and sculptured noise experiments, jumping off from dissonant chamber music and never quite staying in one place long enough to lose momentum. Somehow throughout, Starving Weirdos maintain an intriguing and singular personality no matter what the absorbing experience entails.

The Californian duo’s ability to throw sonic curveballs at opportune times is what brings these pieces up from ordinary to extraordinary. The introduction of a lo-fi drum machine about four minutes into “Just Before the Lights Come Out” is the first of many surprising twists that will keep listeners guessing what might be coming next. The fact that the rhythm never overtakes the song but instead acts as another seamless ingredient on the wild way to its conclusion is both definitive and ingenious, and it sets a tone of unpredictability for the rest of the ride.

Even though the ominous, symphonic drones of “Flowing Without Rest, Forever Onwards” represent the only place on the album where Starving Weirdos appear to be spinning their wheels, the track that follows—“Contemplation of the Setting Sun”—proves once again how surprising the album can be, as it introduces a vocal element that would have been impossible to fathom at any previous point of the record. The fact that the vocals are of an indie folk bent, giving weight to that otherwise perplexing Americana photo on the cover, is all the more impressive, positioning the track somewhere amongst the palatable melody of Neutral Milk Hotel, the gigantic post-rock of Slint, and the maddening freakouts of Oneida.

They save the best for last. Kicking up the volume dramatically, “I Walked Into the Ancient River” launches into an aggressive, anarcho-punk styled assault of reverberating guitar and plodding drums that conjures up distant memories of Fugazi or Crass. Less than two minutes in, this hailstorm completely resides into a swampy murk of ringing tones and overblown, shrieking horns that acts as a foundation for a developing din of dissent. Only after an extended narrative vocal passage, seemingly about nature overtaking the ruins of a fallen city, does the record pull its final punch, revealing that the track builds back into the cacophony where it started—that what had been the beginning was actually a secret glimpse of the end.

Displaying an unparalleled gift for arrangement and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink ethos that never destroys the band’s considerable momentum, what Starving Weirdos achieves here is in fact lightning in a bottle, a current of creativity flowing without rest that, like the fourth track, will have listeners blurring the distinction between the beginning and the end as they play it on endless repeat.