The Dead Shakers drop a new studio album on Sept. 23rd! After four years, Kevin Bloom and co. return with an innovative collection of psychedelic delights. 

“My Death” kicks off with a catchy instrumental riff in D-flat minor. At measure nine, the vocals enter on a key change, observing, “When you die / Nothing happens / Life continues / Without you.” Here also is the first taste of dissonance, courtesy of tritone intervals and hints of a whole tone scale. The form of this track—and of the entire album, which runs like a twelve-movement symphony—is hard to pin down, yet makes weirdly perfect sense in real time. Whenever I think I know what’s coming next, I’m roiled and relieved by a curve.

Take the up-tempo second track, “My Life.” The main theme, a four-bar phrase, grows a half-bar tail before repeating. A practical interlude appears once, then twice, before veering into a bridge that mutates upward with the assertion, “I didn’t ask to be born / Like a bad habit.” The word “habit” lingers over two bars of a brand-new key that’s diabolically only a half-step away from the final interlude. The track closes with a recap of the main theme, bringing to the fore an arpeggiating synth I suddenly realize has been there all along.

The beats per minute increase ever so slightly in “Compost is the Future,” a lively dance number marked by wailing synths and a down-home slide guitar. A modulating chorus features the words, “I will die eventually / My body should be composted.” The resulting tonality, like our corporeal forms, is short-lived.

“Take a Giant Step,” by G. Goffin and C. King, was originally recorded by the Monkees. While the Dead Shakers’ version is lower and slower, with deviations in the lyrics, harmony, and arrangement, it somehow manages to remain faithful to the composition. Flutes, twangy guitars, and a glockenspiel add color, while the bass and drums evoke the Stray Gators with their casual funkiness.

“Numbers” begins with a guided meditation over fragments of rhythm. When the drums go into double time under a barrage of cymbals, sonic beams swirl through and about a nucleus of G.

Nina Szenasi adds trance-like vocals to the center of the mix. At just the right moment, a xylophone leads a gradual disassembly back to the meditation. The adventure comes to a fitting end on the word “peace.”