Of Fungi And Foe

What makes Of Fungi and Foe, Les Claypool’s second and newest album released strictly under his own name, so engaging is not its songs, its sound or the talent of its musicians. It is instead most distinguished by that same duality apparent in other Claypool releases and in his career at large. The first and best known element of this duality is what one continues to expect from the weirdo from Primus — the one who performs in costume, playing that inimitable aggressive slap bass, sometimes hitting the road with jam bands and sometimes with traveling roadshows (like this one). The music on Fungi is esoteric at its very least — the most prevalent instrumentation outside Claypool’s bass is never a guitar but might be the carnival-esque percussion, the vibraphone or the slide whistle. It is full of uncommon sounds and frequently cacophonous (although rarely at the expense of melody). His vocals, almost exclusively built of speak-singing through various vocal filters, usually in a character’s voice, are not half as ironic as the tone of some of the lyrics — consider “Primed in 29,” wherein an old Kentucky whiskeyhound (or so I think) offers amongst other pronouncements: “Jeez what a horrible song/It stinks like a big wet donkey dong/But if you wrap your lips around a bong/I’m sure it’ll begin to sound just fine.” It’s like, his obvious talent notwithstanding, we are never to take this music at all seriously.

Yet, it’s too good not to. For all its eccentricity, the music is also confident and honest and direct, and it has no lack of intention behind it. Partly, it’s the quality of musicianship and the tightness of the arrangements. In the bouncy character sketch “Red State Girl” (about a girl who wants to be Sarah Palin), the slide whistle is less notable for its odd sound than for how cleverly it works within the percussive arrangement. The dynamic and eclectic structures are not distracting but instead endow the music with constant momentum. For all the irony on the surface, most of these songs are actually morality stories, dubious myths or oddball folktales with some lesson at their center. For instance, “You Can’t Tell Errol Anything,” the story of a sage weed dealer told over a vaguely Eastern sound, ends with the boy’s demise at the hands of his tragic obstinacy. The lessons come in more abstract forms too, like the title creature (or man?) of “Amanitas,” who submits to an unspecified temptation and is subsequently punished by his ambiguous female temptress. I’m not suggesting that he means to deliver some message through all this, but at the same time, it’s hard to deny that the music is extremely important to him — it being so honest if also always off-kilter. Consider the last verse of the aforementioned “Primed in 29,” sung over a noticeably darker shift in the music: “Hey mister, spare a dime/It seems the boy has broke his mind/He took it to the limit every time/But he primed by 29/He’s got a broken mind.” It’s a long step to there from donkey dong.

These aspects of Claypool’s music — the sincerity and the detachment, the varying degrees to which he wants me to take him seriously — do occasionally contradict one another but ultimately feel not at odds but equally organic, shades of the music that enhance one another and, in the case of Fungi and Foe, produce a fascinating and enjoyable album experience.