Laura Kerry
One of the songs on Laser Background’s new album is called “Slubberdeguillion.” Appearing, at first, to be a collection of nonsense syllables, it reveals itself to be a real word with one easy Google search. According to Infoplease.com and a late 19th-century dictionary, a “slubber-deguillion” is a “nasty, paltry fellow.”
This single word seems to expose a lot about the way that Laser Background—the project of now Philadelphia-based Andy Molholt—functions. His music works on a few different levels: first, from the pleasure of strange and intriguing sounds, and second, from the realm of thoughtful and calculated meaning. Also, it is a little nasty and paltry.
Take, for an example of the last point, the album name, Dark Nuclear Bogs, which brings to mind a green-hued, post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a nasty and enigmatic phrase that sets the tone for what’s to come in Laser Background’s collection of psych-pop. In the opener, “Mostly Water,” a sweet guitar melody is tinged with a screeching edge, and the instrumental parts subsume the filtered vocals. When Molholt sings, “I want excitement / … / I want everything at once,” it sounds like a dangerous set of desires. “Mostly Water,” Molholt has said, is a song about birth, and the world that the artist subsequently ushers us into is woozy, kaleidoscopic, and dense with contradictions.
Laser Background wastes no time in proving that. From one perspective, the second track, “Hymnals,” is a fuzzy pop song with a delightfully bouncy bass and catchy melody. Take a step closer, though, and you find that the composition is littered with buzzing effects, accents of an eery purr, and a sinister, marching rhythm. Its refrain includes the phrase, “The devil in your soul is singing hymnals underwater in the swamp.”
If a song called “Hymnals” is mired in this sentiment, the next song, “Drink the Dirt,” certainly must be, too. And it is, but in a different way. Brighter and more energetic, it sounds like bossa nova played on ‘80s retro-futuristic synths. As with most of the songs, though, Laser Background suffuses it with dark undertones, as instrumental voices slide into tune and drone with effects. The combination of sounds, along with its oddly sardonic tone, make it sound like a contemporary update to Terry Gilliam’s funny dystopian sci-fi thriller, Brazil.
But Dark Nuclear Bogs isn’t all sweetness threaded with ominousness; some of it is genuinely sweet. “Francine,” which begins, “Francine / Let’s dream,” follows its own invitation into a dreamy, gentle song with sunny guitar and pretty harmonies. Harmonies return in “Soothsaying” and “Climb the Hill,” where in moments, their dizzying effects recall Fall Be Kind–era Animal Collective. “Half-life” is also pretty, comprised of acoustic guitar laced with the blues, and its lyrics sing an updated version of that genre: “The human condition is a bitch.” Some of the album, on the other hand, is all wickedness. “Slubberdeguillion” screeches with noise tossed around in a way that feels tired and lazy (but, as with the rest of the album, is probably rigorously calculated), and “Tiny Jumpers,” which alternates between suspenseful high synth on the verses and a driving chorus.
Take a step back, and all of this—the nastiness, sweetness, dense, screeching noise and delicate, deliberate lines—crystallizes into a cohesive album that is easy to get lost in or hover around at its playful edges. Delightfully weird and deliciously catchy, Laser Background's new LP is one to spend some time with.