Album Review : King Buffalo - The Burden of Restlessness (2021)
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We’ve reached a point of the COVID-19 pandemic where any art directly associated to it feels rushed and tacky. It’s not exactly the artists’ fault because there’s been little else to make art about for fifteen months now, but if you pull people back into this inhospitable mental place you better make it mean something. Not sure if Rochester-based psychedelic rockers King Buffalo quite made it work on their new album The Burden of Restlessness, but I think they did.
This is not an album about being trapped inside your own home, it’s an album about WHAT IT FEELS LIKE to be trapped inside your own home. Not quite the same thing.
The Burden of Restlessness starts with the pulverizing Burning, which is one of the best songs on the record. It’s also one of the most conventional King Buffalo songs on there. It’s build around this operatic, almost Tool-like guitar riff that crescendos into these sweeping heights while Sean McVay howls : another year lost in the wasteland/another day drowns to dust. While the themes are somewhat dark and anxious, the music makes it come alive.
The other song on The Burden of Restlessness which I believe to be a King Buffalo classic is the second single Silverfish. It’s a much more playful song that revolves around these whimsical guitar notes, which is about how your mind wanders and starts playing tricks on you when there’s nothing to do. Sonically it doesn’t have much to do with it, but it reminded me of Fixing a Hole, by The Beatles. It’s a song about seeing wonders in mundane reality.
Locusts is another solid song, although it doesn’t quite recapture the majesty of the aforementioned two. It has these drifting, almost surf-like guitars that build tension so patiently they keep you trapped. There’s some trippy keyboard too, which explodes into these walls of sound while McVay sings about the fucking plague. I mean, it’s cool. It rocks. It just never quite ramps up into these majestic moments there were on Dead Star and the other records.
King Buffalo are at their absolute best when they’re using time to create and subvert expectations. They’re good at being spacey and expansive. I mean, I mostly listen to Longing to Be the Mountain on vinyl, in underwear and under the effect of ketamine. They’re that band. On this album, they seem like they’re trying their hardest to rein themselves in and fit a user friendly format. It stifled their creativity on certain songs, like the other single Hebetation.
This is not a conventionally bad song, but it’s not a good song either. It could’ve been played by less talented bands, which is not a good thing. That’s one thing I realized while listening to The Burden of Restlessness. I’m really dying for the King Buffalo album that is going to have only three twenty-minutes songs. They’re at their best when they’re spacey and trippy. They allow themselves to go to these places on this album, but only barely.
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Don’t get me wrong. I loved this album in the same way I loved the previous King Buffalo releases or almost. I could feel my mind drift to these cool hypnagogic states by moments an reminded me of the most oddly peaceful moments of confinements, but it just kept dragging me back down before reaching a satisfying climax. I liked that record. Outside of Burning, it might’ve lacked that sweep-me-off-my-feet trippy moments I love King Buffalo for, though.
