King Krule’s The Ooz is a Hazy Soundscape of Malaise

The Ooz got a lot of love on some year end lists in 2017. It landed as the 3rd best of the year on Pitchfork’s list and I saw Tyler the Creator saying it was his favorite album of the year on Twitter… so I figured I should check it out.

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First Impressions

The Ooz is a highly experimental album, the first time I listened to it I barely knew what was going on. The music seemed so shapeless and meandering, with all of the guitars and drums buried beneath a ton of vocals.

On the second listen though, the album began making sense. It’s not an album where each song has a full structure. Some tracks are just ambient soundscapes, while others are close to songs but without going all the way there. Many of the full band tracks are psychedelic ballads at glacial tempos.

This whole record feels very depressed, with all of the musical ideas trickling away into nothing. The vocals have a range from whispering to screaming and you never know what you are about to hear. The Ooz exists in a dangerous world where you have to watch your back.

Shoegaze plays a heavy influence on the production style of this album. It isn’t traditional shoegaze - these vocals are highly evocative and draw more from hip hop than anything. But the way the sounds all echo and reverberate, blending into each other, is definitely giving me a shoegaze feeling.

Songs to Check Out

It’s hard to pinpoint individual songs from this record. The playlist feels more like chapters in a book where you need to start at the beginning and hear the whole thing. Nonetheless I’ll give you two standouts to start with:

Half Man Half Shark

This song is crazy, the vocals have so much going on and it is as catchy as it is bizarre. Reminds me of Man Man at times.

Emergency Blimp

One of the most upbeat tracks on the album. The chords are really weird, it’s not what you expect right when the song starts… I like the energy and this kind of upbeat indie rock usually works for me when it is does right.

Final Verdict

This is a great album with some flaws. Overall I appreciate the boldness of the production, the use of ambience and noise, and some good songwriting throughout the record. King Krule shows off high level of creativity on this album.

The flaws for me are that some of the lyrics are weak at times. They are a little simple or songsong-y. The album is a little bit too long, I feel like he could have cut out one or two of the band ballads.

I like this album and will listen to it again in the future. Give those two songs in this post a try if you like experimental blues / indie music… I think Tom Waits fans will appreciate it.