Fanfarlo – Myth of Myself
SoundCloud
I’m in the process of reading This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works in which various scientific experts respond to this question: “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?” I can only read a few chapters per day because the ideas presented are so heavily heady that my brain goes into meltdown mode when I attempt reading beyond that. Many of the genius contributors chose Darwin’s theory of natural selection or something related to it as their favorite deep, beautiful, elegant explanation. Enter Fanfarlo’s third full-length album, which also happens to be deep, beautiful, and elegant. Would you believe it also addresses matters of existence and science? It does. Let’s Go Extinct is a concept album built around the themes of “where did we come from?” but also, and possibly more importantly, “where do we go from here?”
As it turns out, Fanfarlo’s sound is perfectly suited for these intense concepts, as it moves from large-scale synths and full orchestral arrangements to minuscule electronic effects and sci-fi textures. Influences range from Bowie to Byrne, the band’s self-proclaimed “Space Opera”-meets-“Spaghetti Western” sound bouncing and careening through interplanetary spaces. It’s true, there’s a lot going on in terms of both content and sound, but the pop structure at the core of it all keeps the depth both manageable and light-hearted. Light-hearted in the sense that they cast a wistful, hopeful, nearly romantic light on scientific truths such as glimpsing our common elemental origins in one another’s eyes.
The subject matter is weighty, but one can’t help but hear an overarching sense of hope for progress over the talk of explosions and implosions — the “where did we come from?” is counterbalanced by the “where do we go from here?” Beginning with our beginnings (“…I think of us when we were molecules/Sleepin in the dark and like a loaded gun/Waiting for reactions to occur”) and ending with our inevitable extinction (“Cause it’s clear the wheels have turned/We’re standing in the way of ourselves/It’s clear the world will go on without us/And the dust will rearrange itself again”), Let’s Go Extinct is Fanfarlo’s musings on evolution and beyond, and as they move beyond with their own work, the album also sounds like the next phase in Fanfarlo’s evolutionary process. My book club is meeting next month to discuss This Explains Everything, and it looks like I’ve found the perfect soundtrack. Here’s to Fanfarlo not going extinct anytime soon.
