Goon Moon - Lickers Last Leg [Ipecac Records - 2007]This Goon Moon’s second album of genre bending song craft that mixes together retro and stoner rock, psychedelic pop with electronic elements and weird edges. It manages to be chaotic, discordant and rocking, yet also haunting, melodic and full of oddness through out its playing time. It brings together the considerable talents of Jeordie Osborne White (known to many as Twiggy Ramirez from Marilyn Manson, etc) & Chris Goss( of Masters of Reality and producer of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age) the pair invite many other buddies along to help out with the albums construction, but managing to sound constantly true to their distinctive sound. I always felt White was one of the real talents behind a lot of Marilyn Manson’s Greatest work and this surely proves it, his creative juices are really flowing here, melding all the elements together in such a wonderful manner- the songs are clever, inventive, tuneful and often sneeringly caustic and biting with their lyrical content. A few stand out moments come in the form of the albums opener Apple Pie, which opens with a great searing violin screech before dropping into dark synth meets clear guitar multi harmony pop, with off key sinister keyboard wondering and violin screech here and there. Another is the rocking guitar, bass and organ jive around the carpet of Tip toe, which once more weaves into it’s memorable structure multi-layered and varied vocal performances. Though truth be told there really are no low points here, you can hear a lot of time and thought has gone into every sonic detail and sound element here, to build the best album they possibly could. Like all great albums it takes you on an audio adventure managing to be memorable, darkly funny and inventive which is a hell of a balancing act but they pull it off in such a remarkable manner. An intelligent and playful rock/ cross genre record that’s worthy of your time. Roger Batty
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