Sis and the Lower Wisdom
Saints and Aliens
(Native Cat)
2.5/5
Saints and Aliens is the fifth full-length album from experimental jazz yogis Sis and the Lower Wisdom. Hailing from California, these guys have a bright, beachy sound that will not offend anyone. You can hear the palm trees blowing in a mellow breeze. You can feel the teal vinyl mid-century modern Eames chair sticking to your salty skin. They are definitely not reinventing the wheel with this mishmash of acid jazz and lounge house; it feels a bit like Thelonious Monk on a very pleasant mushroom trip.
The funky, disco-inspired groove they lay down is solid enough to prop up the somewhat abstract but never discordant lushness that fills the soundscape, but when you least expect it you’re suddenly ambushed by indie pop, which I found a bit jarring. I was never quite sure when to expect it, or what it was doing there once it arrived.
The musicality is technically proficient; you can certainly tell that the clarinet player knows precisely which end of the instrument to blow into, and the crystalline notes of the synth wash over you precisely like soothing waves on a rather boring beach.
I wouldn’t be mad at this album if it were playing softly in a surf shop or in the soundtrack of a movie about a mildly dull person realizing they were actually mildly interesting, but there’s nothing groundbreaking going on here. You’d be hard-pressed to differentiate this from any other album in the same vein.
Lyrically, Saints and Aliens is kind of neat because there seems to be an overarching theme of feeling lost and confused, tossed into a world not meant for us, out of place. All of which is very much how I felt while listening to Saints and Aliens, so maybe that was intentional. The lyrics, however, don’t really match the sound.
Overall, I would say that I didn’t intensely dislike this narcotic, soporific album, because while it certainly has a sort of jazzy acceptability to it, it doesn’t shoot for the moon. It’s… just fine.