King Kong

Ethan Buckler's King Kong continues to lumber along with supremely slow pop hooks, plodding grooves and Buckler's deadpan spoken vocals. There's nothing wrong with these cumbersome traits, it's just the nature of this beast. The curvaceous bass lines take their time laying down the groove, like a very hot and lazy summer day. King Kong like to set the scene for their musical musings, so this fifth album takes another thematic approach and we find ourselves floating in outer space, looking for intelligent life. But with King Kong's fantastically juvenile approach, we're traveling in cardboard rocket ships all the way. This might not the most obvious production project for blues-rock roughneck Neil Hagerty (of Royal Trux fame), but he has managed to take the band closer to the fucked up funk of Calvin Johnson's Dub Narcotic Sound System, even though things get a bit too ambient and slo-mo at times. At the best moment, the songs are spiced up with some cheesy electro-pop-tronics and the sweet sexy vocals of Amy Partin, making for one super-spacy anti-gravity dance party.