Choose Your Weapon Hiatus Kaiyote Large
After a 3 year wait, fans of Hiatus Kaiyote have finally been rewarded with Choose Your Weapon, the record on which the Australian four-piece opens up their sound into wildly varied new territories. It's an ever-shifting work, packed with techniques borrowed from a certain progressive rock tradition that includes Yes and Rush as much as The Mars Volta and prog jazz the likes of Weather Report. Listeners with attachment issues should be forewarned that the new LP has a penchant for leaving a groove just as it seems to be settling in and on a number of tracks, especially in its first half, the shifts can become incredibly frustrating. Choose Your Weapon is not Tawk Tomoahawk, in a multitude of ways.
While the band's central sense of groove is still intact, what Choose Your Weapon offers is a broadening of scope. Colorful rhythms once more abound, but this time they're painted across a wider canvas. Hiatus Kaiyote has diversified their song structures and tones in a very real way and, simply put, this is a record with much more in it. It’s also long and dense--70 minutes of grooves proffered at a breakneck rate that closes in simple beauty.
1. “Choose Your Weapon”
With its THX-inspired aural bloom, the record’s title track is the sound of an adventure booting up. As a child’s toy declares “The Kaiyote’s goes…,” out of the drift a gritty beat arrives--a jostling knock the likes of which have by now become the band’s signature cry. Video game start screen voices add to the virtualness of it all. We are about to dash off into something wild.
2. “Shaolin Monk Motherfunk”
Choose Your Weapon’s first proper track opens from far-off but quickly turns hyper-present and as lead singer Nai Palm invites us in, singing of clasped palms as we drop into the music. “Shaolin” opens like the Hiatus Kaiyote take on vintage jazz--Paul Bender’s walking bassline punched by drummer Perrin Moss’s old-school swing, which he’s cut and pasted off the ride cymbal and onto his snare and hi-hat. By the time the band leans back into a lush Afropop groove, CYW’s nature is already clear: this is an album that’s flooded with ideas. It eagerly swaps from one to the next, assigning the listener a sonic endurance test. While the songs on Tawk Tomahawk tended to peak and then gently drift away, Choose Your Weapon is much more restless; “Shaolin Monk Motherfunk” curls back upon itself, Palm’s gorgeous vocals leading the way, until a fiending synth riff caps it all off. A six minute gauntlet, it’s the first (and only) warning shot allowed. Weapon’s prog is strong and it’s here to stay.
3. “Laputa”
A moment of bliss. As Simon Mavin’s synthesizer paints huge pastel waves, Palm longs for someone--an “artisan dreamer” who can lead her farther down the path. “Laputa” is essentially a mood exercise, bringing to mind blooming forests and glittering stars as it gracefully swirls in and out of view. Palm’s lyrics add to the effect as she croons out a roster of hazy nouns, the best being “Miyazaki frontier.” Choose Your Weapon--and “Laputa” especially--nails the sort of odd wonder that underlines much of Japanese anime and makes floating castles in the sky seem perfectly natural.
Here, it’s important to pause and take stock. With “Shaolin Monk Motherfunk” and “Laputa,” Hiatus Kaiyote have demonstrated their new LP’s yin and yang: knotty and restless prog-grooving balanced out by slow easy drifts. Choose Your Weapon motors at these two main speeds and while it’s a gorgeous ride it’s also easy to feel lost. It will take numerous listens for all these sections and interludes to fully download into our memory banks; for now, keep plugged in and keep pressing on.
4. “Creations Part One”
On what’s essentially an extended intro to “Borderline With My Atoms,” Hiatus Kaiyote make it obvious they’ve been listening to Flying Lotus.
5. “Borderline With My Atoms”
With lines like “He saw my eyes turn gold and reptile” and “A ripe submergence of the highest order / No borders,” “Borderline With My Atoms” is surely a song about something, but what exactly is impossible to tell. Here, the new album falters a bit. Things drag along from cool soul into loud prog melodrama and even Mavin’s lush piano fills can’t stem the feeling that “Borderline” is a patchwork song made of ideas that just didn’t fit anywhere else. Palm’s lyrics never surpass a kind of woozy moodspeak and as the entire track fades away we’re left a little bemused. Choose Your Weapon does indeed have some trimmable fat and a lot of it lies here.
6. “Breathing Underwater”
Things quickly come back into focus as Palm’s guitar, brighter and stronger than anything heard on Tawk Tomahawk, leads the way in. The band flips itself playfully over and over again, but always returns to a central groove that serves as reference. When the track premiered this spring, Palm underlined her mention of the Jerhico rose, a plant that can lay dormant a century of drought and then flower at the first hint of rain. “Breathing Underwater” is a song of overpowering love--”I could breathe you underwater”--scrawled across a morphing parchment. “It’s also a tribute to my musical hero Stevie Wonder,” Palm said.
7. “Cicada”
A very welcome breather. Choose Your Weapon’s interludes are less extensive than those found on Hiatus Kaiyote’s first LP, most likely because so many separate composed sections made their way into each song.
8. “Swamp Thing”
The album’s weakest moment, in which a decent hip-hop groove gets mussed by kitchen sink fills and a fake-horror chorus that’s impossible to take seriously. Hiatus Kaiyote has always alloyed their funk with a touch of funny, but here the joke falls flat. Had “Swamp Thing” been edited down to its final minute of cool Glasperesque piano it would have served as an excellent album interlude, but as it stands the track is a bloated wreck. Thankfully, it also marks the end of Choose Your Weapon’s slightly overweight first half; from here on out it’s top-tier bangers only.
9. “Fingerprints”
Perfect execution. Tender lyrics, a just-right build and a simple, infectious hook make “Fingerprints” one of Hiatus Kaiyote’s best recordings to date. Close your eyes and you can see a heartbreak evaporate in real time as the track coasts from Mavin’s gentle solo into a triumphant finish--phoenix lyrics and all. In an interview with Revive, Palm revealed that she wrote the song at the age of 16, and if that’s the case, we have all the more reason to be enthralled--her story of a teenager finding herself proves to be universal and profound. Every single measure on “Fingerprints” lives to serve the one that follows it and it’s a shame the song’s cosmic drift can’t last forever.
10. “Jekyll”
For all the rhythmic gymnastics on Choose Your Weapon, Perrin Moss, the man at the middle of it all plays a mostly muted role. But on “Jekyll," they finally give the drummer some as he steps out into the spotlight, turning out a riveting display of alternate percussion that fringes between keyboard jabs to become a searing flicker. “Jekyll” cooks from a jazz den ballad into a breakneck Afrobeat sermon and, finally, down into a sub-basement of grimy funk. Honestly. The ending groove of “Jekyll” is so funked-out it should come with a neck-injury disclaimer; the song warrants five repeated listens, one for each individual musician’s performance, and one more for the collective whole. With the advent of “Jekyll,” Choose Your Weapon hits its full stride.
11. “Prince Minikid”
The weird orchestral spirit of Thundercat seems to looms over “Prince Minikid” as it pairs fluttery tremolo with twisting jazz counterpoint (somewhere the bassist is probably nodding along to this one as he dusts his collection of Dragonball Z toys). Abundant in vibe, a “spooky” cut done just right, “Minikid” is essentially an “on your marks” for what comes next.
12. “Atari”
Many notes pulse like Tokyo’s LEDs and we get the feel of engines boosting, of actual weapons been locked and loaded. On “Atari,” Hiatus Kaiyote shifts from Final Fantasy verses to Sonic the Hedghog choruses engineered by Moss’s slunk drum-n-bass beat. “Atari” has found a way to bottle the joy of hitting the Boost Button from old 16-bit days gone by. This is just pure musical exuberance--a band chasing their fun while we all reap the rewards.
13. “By Fire”
When its opening chords hit, “By Fire” is sure bring on a rush of joyful familiarity. Serious Hiatus Kaiyote fans will already know it well from a certain 3 track EP, and after 12 idea-packed tracks it’s easy to feel a little lost inside Choose Your Weapon at this point. “By Fire” is an uptempo return home. Moss pushes and pulls the tempo at will, and Palm’s doubled vocal become a new instrument unto itself.
14. “Creations Part Two”
Synthesizers from another planet land here fuzzy and faded on what sounds like a Tim Hecker track edited for a shorter run-time. Perhaps Hiatus Kaiyote’s next project should be an ambient album?
15. “The Lung”
Led by a seaside nylon guitar and deep strings, “The Lung” perhaps drags a tiny bit, but the timbres of every instrument involved are so rich, it’s a joyful drift. Mavin’s short solo over a lake of violins is a small highlight of the entire record, and as things fade away we’re left in a beautiful repose.
16. “Only Time All The Time/Making Friends With Studio Owl”
In which the band kicks a hip-hop tasteful interlude and Nai Palm talks to a bird. This is Hiatus Kaiyote, after all.
17. “Molasses”
Measure for measure the most exhilarating thing the band has ever done, “Molasses” contorts itself every which way and still the groove keeps us forever nodding--and on top of all that it’s a love song. Bassist Paul Bender finally steps up and claims the spotlight, crushing bar after bar with silky runs across the neck as Choose Your Weapon hits its tallest, most beautiful peak. With lyrics of leaps of faith and a mood that climbs and climbs and climbs, “Molasses” is a reminder that how purely good music can feel. Hiatus Kaiyote shot for the moon and hit a brand new nebula on this one; it truly might not get any better.
18. “Building a Ladder”
Roll closing credits. After the long, progressive soul climb that is Choose Your Weapon, after so much time spent in its shifting three-dimensional maze, “Building A Ladder” is a final breath of peace. We have survived hyperspace--not it’s time to take stock and let the world softly lull.
Even as the band strikes up for one more slack-taut groove, it’s clear that this is a victory lap. It’s roses falling from the sky and heroes sharing happy goodbyes. It’s also the final plot point and a sort of key to the entire record. "Building a ladder" is what Choose Your Weapon has been about all along--the process of making a structure through which to connect.
These songs, after all, are gifts from four people, the product of time taken out of their limited lives for the sake of connecting with us. Choose Your Weapon is a new imperfect triumph for Hiatus Kaiyote--and is, yes, the greater of their two main works.
