E.P Review: Legs on Wheels - Idelia E.P
‘Milktop Mandy’ opens Idelia E.P with incipient psilocybin affective, an unfurling dream surging into a 70s prog-rock collage; a careening freakshow caravan destined for adventure, and thus an anomaly compared to the remaining material from Legs on Wheels’ latest release, since the next two tracks don’t sustain the same sort of pace and direction in an exploration of the hot sonic landscape under the guidance of a rather puerile narrative as established in their antecedent.
‘Move Closer’ is smooth, cool tones from mouth to mind with a basis of funk for the body in a way that is Steve Miller Band, that is Steely Dan. For some these are jams, but for another majority, songs of the kind elicit little more than a shrug.
Funk/jazz can feel amorphous, can seem indefinite and redundant with compositional qualities that produce apathetic listener attitudes. It is beyond doubt though that underneath each of these tracks is a musically serious substrate, marked by mathematical rhythms and technical instrumentation which showcases blatant and inarguable skill.
For experimentation to translate successfully is a difficult task. ‘Apple Pie’ is a high-strung portent by minute one, and by its end nurtures a near six-minute anxious stasis, exuding a sense of a resolution it doesn’t quite scratch out.
More obvious forebearers of the progressive-rock genre – early Pink Floyd, certain Beatles songs in their later years, Jethro Tull at times –offer instances of experimentation sporadic and spread across careers by single albums and even single songs at a time, which creates contextual challenges in obtaining insight for what aspects of experimentation should be by later artists attenuated, magnified, or created anew.
In all things art, appreciation for the absurd is highly selective, circumstantial, and picky - and in acknowledging the precariousness of that endeavor, we must admire anyone who wants to answer: what is the right kind of strange? We won’t know until it’s tried, and Legs on Wheels leans into the effort to discern the difference.
r.d.e
You can follow Legs on Wheels on their Instagram and Facebook. Stream from Spotify(link above) and buy from Bandcamp
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