The thing about prog music—and many prog musicians are acutely aware of this—is that it's often pretty ridiculous. From the grandiose operatic undertones to the run-on song structures, the fantastical lyrics and the heaps of studio effects, the whole form is a celebration of excess, and during the genre's mid-'70s peak many of genre's top acts produced their best albums simply by trying to outdo each other. Milwaukee's Mortgage Freeman, who approach prog-rock by way of scuzzy rock 'n' roll, have had a lot of fun running with this idea. On their wild 2013 debut The Living Proof, they piled on as many prog troupes as their overstuffed songs could fit, and they embrace the ridiculous even more explicitly on their latest single, "Space Tiger." It's a riff-heavy rocker that could have passed as a Danzig song if it weren't so loaded with narrative voiceovers, studio wonkery and Edgar Winter-style jamming.
The track is the first taste of Mortgage Freeman's upcoming album Streetcrusher, due Oct. 16. The band has a release show lined up at Mad Planet, but in the meantime you can catch them Thursday, Sept. 11 at 10 p.m. when they play a free show at Yield, and check out their "Space Tiger"-inspired website makeover, a browser-testing display in the spirit of vintage self-customized MySpace layouts.
