Review Summary: Not too sweet and not too sour. Not too satirical and not too serious.
Closure in Moscow’s magnum opus: Pink Lemonade- Christopher de Cinque and Manny Zennelli pitch it as The Wizard of Oz meets The Matrix for your ears. But don’t disregard Alice in Wonderland, because one can certainly follow the Fool deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole.
I’m talking about this allegorical, meta-narrative that de Cinque spent nearly five years penning. On the surface, it’s easy to laugh off his words as a nonsensical bastardization of the English language. And, yes, it does appears de Cinque and his Moscow mates give zero ***s from the first track to the last; but beyond the perceived jokiness of this album is a sardonic storyline with a massive scope. Any listener would be foolish not to dive deeper.
The story begins with the Fool, the everyman character, who has lost his way and has wandered into the Qu’al Thagrodor forest where five alchemists are brewing the strangest of potions. The Fool seeks enlightenment and will drink anything to transcend.
A soul like yours just clutching at straws will sip anything from them to bypass a door.
They pour. Not too sweet. Not too sour.
His brain enema commences with a sensual beckoning from the new age prostitute, Byzantine, who lures him out of a dark ally into her salacious futuristic nightclub. Cloaked in neoprene plastic surgery, she’s dismissed as a hollow, hypersexual whore.
The Mars Volta-sounding sexual freak-out rendezvous transitions into what could be a crossover radio hit in “Seeds of Gold,” in which the Fool reflects on his short-lived moment with the time-traveling slut. This young, shallow girl epitomizes the male gaze and cannot satisfy him any longer.
So, he ventures further down the yellow brick road and deeper into the wild phantom forest. Winged creatures bay overhead; are they pterodactyls?
Brahman: a member of the highest priestly class. Tron: an obvious allusion to computers, servers, and lines of code. “That Brahmatron Song”-- that Led Zeppelineesque, blues laden behemoth-- is a bombastic criticism of our society’s religious-like glorification of technology.
I wouldn’t say it’s a god’s kind of music
Cyborgs at the forefront of tech evolution are on a quest to harvest dinosaur bones for sport, like retro clad, thrift shop-hopping, iPhone-in-hand hipsters. A battle commences and now the Fool realizes that the world he hoped to return to is long gone. He must bear witness to a tongue-in-cheek critique of society. The dinosaurs refuse to adapt to a technologically advancing world and arrogantly refuse to fight the Cyborgs with their own tools, opting to rely on outdated methods.
Lasers on them Lizards? We got ‘em beat
Tokamak eugenics? We got ‘em beat
Neutral beam injection? We got em beat
‘Cause all I’ve ever needed was my style, my claws
But they prove no match for the Cyborgs’ secret weapon: a little monkey carrying a Cambrian bomb.
Following the “Dinosaur Boss Battle,” the Fool finds himself more desperate and confused than ever. “Mauerbauertraurigkeit:” German for: a peasant who is walled off or trapped, and feeling overwhelming sadness.
Feeling so worried out of my mind
In my darkest throes, yeah you could be my open door
But I keep falling out of myself
Alone and directionless, he laments his time with the Neoprene Byzantine. Perhaps she was more than her sexual, one-dimensional exterior portrayed. As much as he desires to go back and remedy his relationship, he must continue on.
Finally, he’s drawn into “The Church of the Technochrist.” It is time to become one with the singularity. His tech communion commences amidst a myriad of psychedelic funk guitar riffs. The preacher plugs the Fool’s brain into the holy main frame. The promise of immortality is only moments away. The mammalian texture is shedding; he’s becoming a machine—and then it is all over.
He wakes in a desert only to discover it was all a dream. The more he reflects the more he realizes that everything he desired was in his present life all along.
Now I just smile because everything always was just the way that it should have been
And with that the chapel perilous is complete. Dorothy has returned home, Alice has awoken, and Neo has left the Matrix. The Aussie rollercoaster ride may have left some dizzy, but all were returned safely.
But wait! What about that last track?
