Music Review: Primus’ new album
A Semisweet Tribute to Willy Wonka
Primus’ homage to the celebrated soundtrack of the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory chews up and spits out the sugary original score to reveal a much darker center.
The thrash funk group consisting of bassist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander joins forces with Mike Dillon (marimba) and Sam Bass (cello) to concoct Primus & the Chocolate Factory with the Fungi Ensemble (ATO Records), a tribute so zany and madcap – classic Primus – that it perfectly matches Wonka’s wacky top hat and purple pressed suit.
But the studio album – the band’s eighth and first with its three core members since 1995 – doesn’t simply re-open doors from Roald Dahl’s tale, a childhood obsession of Claypool’s. Primus unhinges those doors to reveal rooms that even the more daring Oompa Loompas would consider otherworldly.
In “Candy Man,” the album’s second of 14 tracks, Alexander’s booming floor toms lay the foundation of a room so shadowy that the flow of chocolate rivers can be neither seen nor heard. Instead, the mechanical drumbeat evokes a room in which the factory’s more bitter treats are mined.
LaLonde’s screeching strum of his electric axe couples with Dillon’s echoing xylophone to introduce Claypool’s dissonant, mooing bass and grumbly vocals. The frontman’s solo chorus – “The candy man can ’cause he mixes it with love/And makes the world taste good” – is, like the album’s other reincarnations, taken verbatim from the original. But you must do more than simply recall the words. “Golden Ticket” requires both careful listening and a childlike imagination to connect this ticklish, spooky version and its uplifting orchestral original.
Claypool’s gentler voicing echoes through a haunted hallway as the flanging guitar and xylophone slowly enter. His choruses throughout the album are amusing because they’re delivered in what sounds like a Gregorian playhouse: He chants – even shouts – spellbinding, baritone incantations.
The music in “Oompa Augustus,” “Oompa Violet,” “Oompa Veruca” and “Oompa TV” is repeated throughout Chocolate Factory, forming compact pieces of bittersweet nourishment. But these songs, which differ only in their lyrics, mark a missed opportunity for further creativity from Claypool and Co. Though melodically goofy, the Oompa Loompa suite loses its charm severed from its connection to the fantastical plot.
The Fungi Ensemble – in essence, the duo of marimba and cello – adds the most color and brightness to Primus’ murky chamber music. The xylophone’s reverb evokes a child’s pipe organ that would have nicely adorned Wonka’s Chocolate Room, where overweight Augustus met his delicious demise. And the cello, the most polished of the instruments, provides perfect melodic accompaniment to the perky bass picking that feeds the rhythm.
This 41-minute alt rock toast to Dahl’s creation is not intended for the Wonka virgin, nor is it composed for a symphonic purist. Primus, who premiered the project this past New Year’s Eve at a concert in Oakland, Calif., stamps the label of freakishly unique music on a similarly eccentric subject. Here the two weird worlds unite. And Willy would approve.
