Purple Onion

Purple Onion

One year after erstwhile Primus leader Les Claypool reemerged as the leader of the jammy Les Claypool's Flying Frog Brigade, the bass wrangler throws another curve. With <I>Purple Onion</I>, Claypool reigns in much of the free-floating improvisation of FFB's initial releases in favor of something more akin to a proper Primus album, complete with bizarre comic voices, eccentric scenarios, and funky interludes. But this isn't a true Primus album, since there are absolutely no seafaring references on any of the 12 songs. In fact, many of the numbers are less songs than loosely connected chapters of a concept album somewhat akin to Alice Cooper's grim 1975 classic, <I>Welcome to My Nightmare</I>. But instead of Cooper's disturbed Steven, Claypool chronicles David Makalster, "a 10 o'clock newscaster" whose broadcasts of doom are worthy of Frank Zappa in his prime. Claypool here demonstrates that he has the daring to take Pink Floyd's excesses and fuse them with his own nerdy paranoia to create a singular album. <I>--Jaan Uhelszki</I>