When you review their respective strengths, sounds, talents, and steampunk-inspired fashion sense, Les Claypool and Sean Lennon are a perfect match.
Claypool is the elder statesman of weird music. The charmingly eccentric bass maestro who fronts Primus is also a solo artist, leader or co-collaborator in Frog Brigade, Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains, etc., and a savvy guest for Tom Waits and Adrian Belew, among others. He’s also a showman to the nth degree, a force of seemingly offhand instrumental wizardry who executes both earnest and entertaining maneuvers amid cheeky chattiness.
Sean Lennon is the legacy of John and Yoko made flesh with an impressive 25-year career in his own right. In some ways, he takes after his dad—deft use of melody, sweetly emotive vocal quality, poignant turn of lyric, familial resemblance—but his mom, too, in his quirky composition style. At the same time, he’s thoroughly informed by modern psychedelic sounds and his own collaborations and experiences, with musical projects ranging from the Shibuya-kei-informed alterna pop of Cibo Matto to proggy instrumental Mystical Weapons with Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier to his trippy, enchanting folk-pop band with girlfriend/collaborator Charlotte Kemp Muhl, the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (the GOASTT). And he’s produced or worked with a broad swath of artists—John Zorn, Lana Del Rey, Black Lips, Deltron 3030, Lady Gaga.
