The Claypool Lennon Delirium played to the edge of imagination at the State Theatre on Sunday night. Their heavy mix of classic and newly minted songs, with a variety of electronic enhancements, kept the large crowd engaged and moving. And their sense of humor further served to make the 90-minute performance an exciting one.
Les Claypool and Sean Lennon have established a promising partnership after befriending each other last year during a combined tour of their respective bands, Primus and The Ghost of the Sabre Tooth Tiger. Claypool’s virtuosic electric bass work and Lennon’s getting-better-all-the-time lead guitar playing, combined with some shared eccentricities, has already made the group a formidable force in a music scene hungry for something new, even when it contains many elements of what’s come before.
The group offered several tunes from their album, “Monolith of Phobos,” a collection put together by minds obviously open to what’s beyond the everyday.
The title piece emerged from a spacey electronic haze to establish the setting for Claypool’s insistent vocal, asking “why we live and do or die.” The song’s spooky lyrics were mirrored in an instrumental core shared among Claypool’s percussive bass work and Lennon’s psychedelic guitar lines. Keyboardist Mark Ramos Nishita and drummer Paul Baldi filled out the sound.
Some comedic camaraderie, initiated by Claypool, led to the funky “perversity” of their song about “Mr. Wright,” who’s always “creeping through the night.”
The arty, prog-rock era of the last century seems to have special allure for the band as selections by King Crimson and Pink Floyd figured prominently in the mix.
“The Court of the Crimson King” added drama, with Lennon’s vocals calling to mind the playful dreaminess of his Beatle father John Lennon’s psychedelic period. A wash of organ chords and heavy-on-the downbeat guitar thunder also reinvigorated this vintage anthem.
Pink Floyd’s “Astronomy Domine,” with its descending chorus seemingly out of some sci-fi B-movie, likewise took things to an edge of the musical universe that this group favors. A soaring guitar solo matched Lennon’s vocal in celebrating the ethereal.
Things reached transcendent levels on the set closer, a tune written by Lennon’s dad that highlighted the ways in which the son sounds and thinks like his legendary father. “Tomorrow Never Knows,” with its exotic harmonies and movement-inducing rhythmic lurch, rode the young (at 40) scion’s vocals into a spectacular instrumental close with wah-wah guitar evolving into a loop of sound that persisted as Lennon doffed his hat to the crowd and left the stage.
The evening began with a brief set from JJUUJJUU, a quartet well into its own journey to psychedelic jam nirvana.
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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