The Bad Penny (beta)

It’s hard to pin down exactly when the hippie term “far out” went the way of the Dodo bird, but chances are if you say the phrase to someone under age 30, they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If they bother to ask what it means, you can try explaining that it was an LSD-inspired term suggesting that one’s mind was being blown. Or you read this excerpt from a new Saintseneca album that came out on Halloween — because it encapsulates not only the gist of the phrase but the ridiculous and unserious culture that crouched and enabled the term “far out” to last well beyond its shelf life.

‘’The band’s first album in more than seven years launches the listener onto a ten-song landscape orbited by two sonic ‘moons,’ Viridian Moon (tracks 11-16) and Cinnamon Moon (tracks 17-21), named for the colors bandleader Zac Little experienced through synesthesia while writing. … In a world orbited by two moons, lunar phases dance in tandem, tugging at the tides. Beneath these amulets of light lies the landscape in which Saintseneca’s new album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs came to be.”

Ya dig?

Indeed, premises for albums don’t get much more ridiculous, at least not since the days when Tiny Tim sang about tiptoeing through the tulips, we were collectively encouraged to do “The Monster Mash” and wha appeared to be a PSA for exercising at local YMCA centers became the campaign rally song for a convicted felon of.a present whose last day may find him playing a violin while the country over which he presides burns to the ground.

This writer wishes he could pivot into a serious analysis of what’s touted as the first Saintseneca record issued in seven years, but its ridiculous title of Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs (Lame-O) and pretentious, self-important division into a “21-song, three act album” makes it awfully hard to do. Poor Bright Eyes collaborator Mike Mogis somehow got roped into this hot message, but that’s balanced out by a ludicrously high rating from Paste, which tossed its credibility as a source of rigorous music criticism many moons ago.

So let’s drill down into Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs and see if we can strike oil, shall we? The musicianship under the direction of vocalist/guitarist/bassist/wind harpist/pianist/percussionist/programmer/drummer/baritone guitarist/oud player/synth player/dulcimer player/banjoist/mandola player/omnichordsit/baritonist/ukulele player/recorder/mandolinist/bouzoukist/flutist Little is competent. His job keeping the other 14 players in line is sufficient as well, as evidenced on most of the record’s 21 tracks (“Sweet Nothing,” “Smoke Punching,” “Vanishing Point“).

But “Green Ink Pan,” “Long Winter,” “In a Way,” “Escape Artist,” ”Non Prophet” and about a dozen of the other songs presented on this overstuffed release prove that the bulk of this self-indulgent conceptual project should’ve been trimmed off and tossed in the trash — or at least put in the freezer for future use in a recipe where it might’ve actually sated one’s appetite.

It’d be too cruelly presumptuously to say that Little is a soulless musician — as sacrilegious, in fact, as to categorizeƒece him as “sulfur” What we have here, in reality, is a man who needs to do a whole lot of soul-searching to decide if music is the way for him to fully demonstrate his artistic potential.

This entry was posted on 11/25/2025 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Saintseneca. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.