So what is the music? If you like prog, Legs On Wheels fits right in the tradition, crafting Gobble from the DNA of Wakeman-era Yes, Gabriel-era Genesis, The Mountain-era Haken, and loads of Zappa-era Zappa. Dramatic lead vocals; layered harmonies; plucky guitars over yet more electric and acoustic guitars; tight drumming; ripping bass; the occasional organ, piano, and synth. In no way do all these layers form an overwhelming sonic sludge. Instead, the band’s musicality paints a lush picture, and the engineers captured every stroke.

There’s a frantic energy from the opening track Oysters On The Half Shell through the end without much pause, though the band takes a few slow trips through melty, contemplative territory. From the alien bar music in A.P.E.S. to the infernal rock of Dinnertime for Rat, I was saying, yep! That’s prog™.

Lyrically, like all great prog, there are moments you scratch your head and ask, “What are you even talking about?” And, like any prog enthusiast, I wouldn’t really care as long as the words sound good. But the lyrics are not entirely dadaistic. With vivid imagery, they explore themes ranging from the exploitation of nature by the wealthy to the folly of humankind to the very purpose of life. The grandeur here suits the genre but more importantly carves out depth that makes Gobble worth revisiting with the lyric sheet in hand.

Indeed, a second listen, at least, is required to fully appreciate Gobble. Taking this frantic, ADHD-coded approach to music comes with the risk of throwing out so many musical ideas that the listener simply does not have enough to grab onto before the handle is yanked away for the next idea. I found myself lost a few times here, and found even my uncommonly high tolerance for progginess and musical dorkiness tested. But then the band hits with their quirky but irresistibly catchy chorus like in Peekaboo or the triumphant hell-yeah headbanging payoff at the end of Waiting For His Drowning, and I was back on board for the ride. Plenty of moments induced that gnarly frown-smile you get when music is absolutely so nasty it rocks. The ripping keys solo in Centipede in particular had my jowls[sic] on the floor.

No prog album would be complete without at least one ten-plus-minute track. The finale Masteroid satisfies the role. Here, the lyrics wrap up by the halfway mark, launching the instrumental into a sick journey through some afterlife suggested by those final words. The tune builds into an overdrive, evoking some hyperactive run into a speeding neon grid where you’re hopping waist-high fences and ducking electric bats while heading toward the light. Suddenly, the ticker gives out, and the music slowly devolves through a trippy and chill if somewhat depressed post-lude as the screaming feedback of a tape loop overtakes it all. Finally, in an even slower denouement, you’re back where you started, in space, almost feeling, as the lyrics say, “destined to drift forever”.

Here’s where I wish the album kept reaching and pushing, maybe recapitulating an earlier theme for an ultimate payoff. The 10-minute track, like elsewhere on the record, comes to a bit of an anticlimax. So, perhaps, the album didn’t quite reach that holy catharsis for me. It is dense with musical ideas, but maybe those musical ideas aren’t always fully explored or revisited. Nevertheless, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable ride with lots of highs and plenty to dig into again. And its existence is a testament: prog is alive and well.

Favorite track: Peekaboo

Listen to Gobble on Bandcamp:

The band has a particular taste for lush atmospheres and tones, especially the eerie-beautiful synth filling out Goodman or the gang vocals nah-nah-nahing over the stadium solo at the end of ZIELLO. The album reaches moving, goosebumps-inducing highs as Ozmun’s vocals and lyrics evoke the fear of being out of reach of a helping hand, of being left behind.

At times, it does risk flying too low, like in midpoint track Edgewater. For me, the composition here doesn’t give me enough harmonically or melodically to latch onto, so I struggled to follow it from the very low start into the intended high-point catharsis. But the wicked talent for tone, groove, and pure rock soon returns with the next track, the title track, a banger that ends so heavy I was begging for more.

In fact, the energy is even higher on the back half of the album. It’s not a quiet contemplative collection of tunes meant to be heard in private. It’s a journey worth seeing through to the end. Like in life, man. One day, you look back on all the homes you had to move on from and think: at least you were Always Living Somewhere.

Favorite track: Stray Black Dog

Listen to Claire Ozmun’s Always Living Somewhere on Bandcamp:

Los Angeles band Cheekface’s single Black Site doubles up every ingredient in the well-established Cheekface Cookbook to make enough sorta-middle-class protest power pop to feed the masses starved for meaningful rock: 2x driving beat, 2x ripping bass line, 2x painfully funny lyrics delivered irony-smothered but not masking the rage underlying them, and this one riff in the chorus that is so catchy literally everyone cheers when it happens, x2. Adding Cheekface to my favs on that morally-bad-but-too-convenient-not-to-use delivery app so I can get another slice of whatever they’re cooking on the double.

Listen to Black Site on Bandcamp: