Empire of The Sun's Nick Littlemore On Scary Good

“Mount Cleverest starts up like liquid black spice and I’m suddenly awash with a fever, six fingers of gin distilled in the back of a bordello and we’ve just walked in or maybe we’ve been here for days and I’m just realising it over and over again. Like ending and beginning at once stoned and at once zen. Taking the treasures of the west that were already hijacked from Spain, deep down and onwards south of the border where no ones recording the deeds of men, where fears are just figments and memory a blur. Too fierce for Tarantino who’s lost his edge, this stings like a proper hit of mescal or ten. Six wounds of men, those chills and the sweat that can only come from guilt binding us and them and although we are gringos there is a level of acceptance here, a knowingly wry glance shot across the bar.

The drums hark back to kraut rock beat box and yet Ennio Morricone too. The electric guitars lowly sing out in baritone as we’ve heard before but don’t be fooled and listen too closely, its a ruse, all here is justified, in a thin disguise awaiting the arrival of the flamenco. We can see all things warming up, and it feels like a record that couldn’t be made at any other time. The future sounds like Spanglish, let’s hope the food is as legit as this. From out of nowhere Harry Neilson’s guitarist makes a play for the light as the door swings open but is quickly diminished and we all return to our drinks without wishing to meet the day or even the week. This is not a sliding scale of depravity, we have already gone deep, it never started sweet. There maybe heroes in the seaweed but we are miles from them. When this chaos ends we are left with a stellar memory and led gently back to the womb, the ocean, the mother of all and healer of sin.

But before we forget those horns give rise to redemption and redefine whatever judgment you might have met in your mind. So one last look around the bar and you’ll start to notice that there are all kinds if you squint your eyes. Such features of creatures here, not just what you first thought there could be. I see the giant laughing owl madly happy and it’s friend, she is beautiful and strange to begin, they tell me she dances with psilocybin and only now I’m realising there was something crazy in that gin, or was it mezcal? I forget many things but I always remember to sin. Choose your trip well, but wherever you land let the music guide you, for in music there is only truth. Leave the details to your dreams and spare your sad sorrowful eyes, even though these tears are beautiful they speak not of it. We can all learn from this song, it’s about us, we are all mongrels mixed up and in between and such colorful things are dwelling within everyone of us. So I salute this brief but storied effort, it had me at hola and I’ve had it on repeat, ever since. Take me back to Mexico, where we may all be poets and lovers without the chains of this ungodly pursuit of money and shit. Let’s live our lives like the tune, let’s return to the visceral and meet in the dunes.

Pauly and co have outdone themselves and in true gentlemanly style as I’ve always come to expect from such seasoned arbiters of love and chaos across all kinds of genres effortlessly, but where can we enter this strange dream, now we need a tour and a film to see, for who’ll take us to where the music plays so addictively, uncage this ship its doom.” – Nicholas Littlemore, Empire of the Sun, PNAU

SCARY GOOD the album, out now on Spotify & iTunes.