Desole is the latest album from Melbourne based experimental collective Umlaut who for this album are a 4 piece of, Angus Leslie, Shane Leiber, Clinton 'Bar' McKinnon and Danny Heifetz the latter two are also in Mr Bungle. The album was engineered and mixed with assistance of Michael O'Connell and Nao Anzai.
The Album opens with The Tarnished Legacy with a minimalist piano led intro to this song of forgiveness for everything you did to them, destroying the relationship you had. The synths start to build trying to take the pain away.
Happy Now opens like a Sun Ra instrumental freak out, that becomes an indie rock song, that throws that barbed retort of Happy Now at you, while your crimes are listed and they make clear what they feel about it, before they descend into a jazzy rage.
Cold Sore has a dirty sax intro, with gentle guitar flourishes and all the questions of how the woman you love got that Cold Sore that means it needs nasty almost heavy metal vocals for a bit, before it shifts into a nasty bassline and poppy backing, making it feel like 4 songs mashed into one, on this song that was originally recorded by Mr Bungle for the Disco Volante album but didn't make the cut that time.
Bite Your Tongue (The Cupboard Song) uses 70's sounding soundtrack keyboards and saxophone, gently bringing the strings in to make sure you never spill the beans, to what really went down in that Cupboard at that party, when the computer games Rhubarb And Custard style synths come in we know it's all gone strange again.
Every Time you think you know what's coming Umlaut throw another curveball at you, in this case its soft synths with bell chimes, odd flute sounds and a chorus of backing singers, with distressed guitars and several layers of otherness, snatches from other dimensions.
Grumpy Library is a selection of Library style music for scenes of grumpiness, all the disgrace and questions of forgiveness, this sounds like a 70's school holidays TV series music, I almost expect them to start going on about Skippy, instead it has an explosive ending.
Vinnie is about to scythe you down for talking too much, with the askew riff and sax interjections they keep shouting out talk too much, while explaining why they think that, over super squiggly guitar noodling and propulsive drumming. Bumblebee Shoes is laid back synth jazz with what sound like almost improvised vocals, like you should be drinking Campari and smoking More cigarettes while listening to this in your local cocktail bar.
STFU starts like it's a ballad for someone who overuses the word sorry till it becomes meaningless, soulful vocals with a wine bar saxophonist and flutes, you'll soon float away with them, in ways you might not expect of a song called STFU.
They then go all 1990's with a long silence before the final track My Government Is Never Wrong comes in to sound as odd and twisted as the title suggests, this is bonkers in extremis, the tape rewinds in odd places, they have a dark nightmare about Trump and Biden in super strange ways, totally in keeping with the rest of the album, but also sounding like it comes from someplace else.
Find out more at https://umlautbarmckinnon.bandcamp.com/album/desol https://linktr.ee/umlautbarmckinnon https://www.facebook.com/UmlautBarMcKinnon
