Review Summary: All work and no play makes muzak a dull joy
Love Heart Cheat Code is as easy to enjoy as Haiyatus Coyote is to misspell. Initiates of their neosouljazzfunk kaleidoscope have had engorged love chakras since the band first flexed their lithe musical chops on 2012's
Tawk Tomahawk, but lovers-to-be too can seamlessly embark upon the opener "Dreamboat" and be welcomed into their oeuvre in a cascading and cleansing wash, swells of pianos and strings gently prying apart third eyes so that we might voyage together into a realm of acceptance, where vocalist/guitarist Nai Palm will elucidate that the cosmic phenomena that coincided with your birth ("Telescope") are as worthy of your loving gaze as BMO from Adventure Time ("BMO Is Beautiful").
If memery in music is enough to upset your chi balance, take a nice deep breath with me. Wooosaaahh. Niki Yang (BMO from Adventure Time) does indeed feature in a wacky little track that wouldn't be out of place in a drug-addled Saturday morning cartoon, but it's merely a breezy 40-second intro to the rather fucking wonderful "Everything Is Beautiful", a track that packs more bespoke licks than a two-tongued terrier and features a seriously dynamic and free-flowing guitar performance that'll get your blood singing. It is busy, it is bold, it is a highlight. Further piss-taking across the album is also fortunately tempered: "Longcat" is actually not all that long, and does dip into some fun polyrhythmic interplay, while lyrics like "
fuck it up, buttercup" are actually a fairly snug fit within the loose confines of this playful gamut-run of an album.
Frivolity hasn't exactly been a novel occurrence in Hyatus Koiyote's career to date, but here it feels elevated by what the band has described as a search for simplicity. The lyrical approach is largely minimalist in its thematics, focusing on simple truths (love is the answer: "Love Heart Cheat Code"; you don't make friends, you find them: "Make Friends", etc), and some tracks only have a couple-three stanzas to them once you sift past the ubiquitous "
ooohaaahs". Pop song structures attack in kind, sometimes even with relatively vanilla chord progressions and straight and steady rhythms.
But watch the fuck out! This is Kaiyotus Haiyote with their digits on the instruments after all, and simple isn't exactly their first musical instinct. They'll verse-chorus their way to a bridge and bring that shit home again as the metrics say they should, but suddenly there'll be eighteen Nai Palms singing, the chords are all growing odd extensions and getting comped all over, a flock of flutes flies in, and some cunt wanders into the mix with an ungodly basslike instrument that he insists is called a 'frello', and guano coats the walls. Song structures start to morph, disguising themselves beneath blossoming instrumentation that swirls into sonic tangents as fractals expanding. Arrangements shift almost entirely between verses, and a dense, psychedelic mix feat. hyperkinetic panning makes you turn up that Mario Caldato Jr. goodness and just lose yourself in the noise
only to find yourself being pummelled by
Love Heart Cheat Code's final brace of tracks. First of all, there's "Cinnamon Temple" – a completely unpredictable journey into linear songwriting containing (among other things) big fuzzy riffs, audacious drums, silly and righteous vocalisations, and a crazy coda that will demand all of your close-listening skills to separate into its parts. Before you can question who has taken Peyote Nairobi hostage and demanded this sudden change in their musical approach, the band launch into a nearly unrecognisable cover of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" which pivots between menacing and minimal atmospheres to swooping strings to something resembling industrial hip-hop which is given pride of place in a towering reprise to finish off the album. I always thought the original was a minute or two short, but uh…the fuck?
Truth is, this endgame eschewing of Hiatus Kaiyote's established sound might be
Love Heart Cheat Code's best quality — and it's got plenty to choose from. What's confusing is that it feels like an album-long plan coming into fruition, but it's really a sudden drop off a cliff, as well as a cliffhanger regarding the band's future. Whatever comes next, I sure hope it's got as much expressionistic ready-to-fuck messiness as it does easy-going platonic love, because in the act of simplifying and sillifying, Hiatus Kaiyote have let slip that they are capable of a completely different shade of brilliance.
