Photo Credit: Flu-Like Symptoms
When the press materials urged this was meant to be listened to as a piece in its entirety, it might have been a red herring. It is not uncommon to get emails with little more than, “Here is the link, please review our album.”
But diving into Blind Corners, the new album by Flu-Like Symptoms (ex-Tapebenders), it became obvious that this is a well-conceived project—an aural road trip, complete with midtempo psych-riffage and trippy musical segues serving as trestles between songs, resetting the listener’s headspace just enough for the next catchy melody. Acoustic guitars balance the sounds of Mellotron; distorted keyboards, pastoral-strummed acoustic guitars buoyed by strings and horns recall the pocket-epics of the great Arthur Lee’s band, Love. Driving rockers, spiked with alien synths appear as if approaching in a rear-view mirror.
As the album unfolds, the schizophrenic genre-blurring simply draws the listener in, just in time for another stylistic U-turn. While not the emotional roller-coaster of The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, Blind Corners is cut from the same cloth.
Midway through the album-length track, a vocalist sings, “You know what I said to you, but you don’t know what it meant.” Perhaps not, but it was great.
Flu-Like Symptoms performs with City Mouse and Marc Alan on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at Quarters Rock and Roll Palace, 900 E. Center St.
