During the summer of 2015, Sean Lennon’s neo-psychedelic band Ghost of a Saber Tooth filled the opening slot for a string of Primus shows, a trek that found Lennon partaking in spontaneous back stage jams and sitting in during the headliner’s set. Primus bassist Les Claypool was so impressed by Lennon’s musical talents and vision that he suggested recording together. Lennon agreed and committed to the idea, and after spending six weeks at Claypool’s home in Northern California making music, they had some songs of their own. The Claypool Lennon Delirium was born, an effort that has yielded a full-length album, “The Monolith of Phobos,” and a tour to go along with it.
The collaborative project wrapped up the first leg of their debut tour at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, on Saturday, June 18th. For 100 minutes or so, the audience was taken down a rabbit hole on a psychedelic/prog rock journey to an absurd, spooky and deranged world, where the stories of pill-poppers, a zany nitrous sucking captain, a creepy Peeping Tom and Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee Bubbles are told. The ride got weird and whacky, heady and heavy, spooky and spacey. The setlist included every cut from the band’s debut album Monolith of Phobos with a few covers by Claypool and Lennon’s other bands and two of their obvious influences as a group; Pink Floyd and the Beatles. Along with Money Mark on keys and Paulo Baldi on drums, the four piece displayed stellar musicianship under kaleidoscopic lights and light projections of the cosmos and ancient pyramids, wowing in sound and visual presentation. In a mindblower of an encore, the night’s opening act’s namesake Dean Ween and his guitar joined in and jammed with the Claypool Lennon Delirium for an out of this world cover of Primus’ “Southbound Pachyderm.”
But before he sat in with the Claypool Lennon Delirium, Dean Ween and his versatile band of musicians opened the show, offering up nine songs that made it impossible to ever pigeonhole their sound. Following the Allman Brothers flavored instrumental (aptly named “Dickey Betts”) that kicked off their set, the band took a radical turn into thrash metal with “It’s Gonna Be a Long Night.” There was a captivating cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Stella Blue” (likely a nod to the San Francisco band’s well-known history with the venue they were playing,) followed by some country twanging with “I Saw Gener Crying in His Sleep.” Les Claypool joined the band for an extra-weird version of Ween’s “The Mollusk,” before closing out the set with an even weirder version of the “The Rift.”
The lights went down late in the ten o’clock hour and the headlining act took the stage to the sound of “There’s No Underwear in Space,” the closing instrumental of their new album. This band, all members looking official in their cosmic credentials, strapped on their instruments and launched a space odyssey of a set with the two-part “The Cricket And The Genie.” This was the sort of intergalactic album rock reminiscent of Hawkwind or Iron Butterfly. You could also hear a rawness and weirdness similar to White Album era Beatles. Colonel Claypool’s Wonka doom, thunder funk bass playing and Lennon’s George Harrison-meets-punk distortion guitar playing made for some serious 21st Century head trip music.
The funky doom creep of “Breath of a Salesman” traveled to the dark and devious places that Primus often wander to, and got wonderfully far-out when Lennon got all late seventies classic rock with a talk box. The band then segued into the ethereal “The Monolith of Phobos,” where Money Mark’s angels of heaven soundscapes and Claypool’s fluttering trance bottom soared and sounded like a bird on a moonlit night flight, while Paulo Baldi laid down a hypnotic skip on the kit and Lennon added sixties pop harmonies.
The band had a few art rock songs rich in social commentary. “Ohmerica” shared humourous observations about the con job that is American politics. “Boomerang Baby” got into some millennial blues. “Oxycontin Girl” spoke of pharmaceutical fueled youth. Lennon would blow minds with his wailing guitar abilities by dropping a David Gilmour-like solo that traveled to Mars and back during “Bubbles Burst,” a modern psychedelic epic about Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles and his adventurous times on Neverland Ranch. “Mr. Wright” got into some of the most killer jam grooves of the night. “Cosmic Highway” by the Les Claypool Frog Brigade showcased Claypool’s Zappa-on-bass virtuosity while a cover of “Animals” by the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger reminded the crowd that Lennon has an avant-garde soul like his mother and father.
Throughout the set, one could hear a major Pink Floyd influence on the band’s sound. Some songs had had a feel of the Syd Barrett fronted sixties years and others more of the Roger Waters led-years in the seventies. This influence made clear with a rocket-ship-to-the-moon cover of the Manchester band’s “Astronomy Domine.”
Following one of the proggiest cuts off the new album, “Captain Lariet,” the band capped off their set with an electrifying cover of the Beatles’ breakthrough psychedelic rock epic “Tomorrow Never Knows.” The band dove deep into a sonic meditation while Lennon sung the song’s consciousness mantras once delivered by his father.
The band returned to encore with a cover of Primus’ “Southbound Pachyderm.” Opener Dean Ween snuck onto the stage part of the way through to add some blazing guitar solos to the jam, making for the band’s first-ever guest sit-in, and what a memorable sit-in it was. It’s fair to say that the jamband, metal and prog-rock cosmonauts that came out to check out something that they hoped would be unique and sensational were not let down.
The Lennon Claypool Delirium output hitting in 2016 holds up amongst the best work from both of its masterminds and one could only hope that there is more to come. In the meantime, a second leg to their tour kicks off in late July, where you can catch them on west coast, Midwest and again on the east coast later this summer.
One Response
Please add a few stops to the tour, come play in Hawaii!!