There's a ferociously melodramatic tenor to Extra Life's manic, menacing, chin/head-scratching music that seems indebted to opera, or any kind of ancient theater from a less cynical, digitally-intimate era. Charlie Looker sings as if projecting to the cheap seats up the back, hefting his voice and tightening his diaphragm as his band's bizarre medieval-math-rock ricochets madly."Righteous Seed" —the first taste from the third Extra Life LP, Dream Seeds, due out April 10— is suitably Looker-ish; a galloping, gathering storm of fragrant prog stirred up towards deliriously over-the-top peaks, delivered with such hysterical theatricality that most listeners will instantly bristle upon hearing it (which is, in some ways, surely the point).
"I'm by your side if you need to cry!" Looker wails, amidst a nasty song —all sludgy bass and whipped percussion— filled with religious terrors, grotesque visions, and this quality that makes me think of malicious gossip taking on a life of its own. The Extra Life leader (a former member of Dirty Projectors and homie o' Owen Pallett) calls Dream Seeds an album-long study in the "harrowing yet transformative nightmares" of children, with Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There seemingly looming as spiritual influence.
Extra Life, "Righteous Seed"
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