Brooklyn-based collective Lettuce Inn delivers a kaleidoscopic blend of psychedelic pop, art-rock, and orchestral touches on their album Let Us Never Do This Again. Drawing on the diverse backgrounds of members from The Road To Ruin, Urban Orangutan, and Little Beef, the record achieves a consistently gripping sense of invigoration.
Opening the album with stylish intrigue, “The Welcome Mat” achieves a colorfully psychedelic pop appeal — eclectic in its range of instrumentation, from brass-y stomps to harmoniously foreboding vocal layers. The “drinking lavender soap” sequence is especially impactful, traversing from darker psychedelic territory into a playfully glowing “please leave yourself on the welcome mat” carnival-like joyousness. “Tennis” also delights, building from fragmented bustles of grumbling guitars and sharp synths as a quivering vocal envelopment, with shades of Syd Barrett, takes hold. An art-rock array captivates past mid-point, as various orchestral elements resemble a jazzy jaunt through late-night streets.
The ensuing “Everything Is Taken Away” is another standout, showing the project as also capable at excelling in the more feverish, intensified rock realm; spacey synth buzzes intertwine here as well, though largely the track rides on its fervent guitar work. Free-flowing brass contributes to the very alive feeling. “The Fat Man Turns On” is further exemplary of their excellent, ambitious songwriting — dazzling across both its simmering beginnings and “don’t pick up the phone” culmination, showing a bit of a later-era Beatles-esque appeal in bridging hooky approachability and oddball psychedelia. Consistently touting excellent songcraft, Let Us Never Do This Again succeeds throughout all seven of its tracks.
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“The Welcome Mat” and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
