‘This is Kangaroo Court’
Kangaroo Court
Chicago garage rock band Kangaroo Court releases their debut album, a journey through feelings of frustration and hopelessness.
About a month ago, the guys from Kangaroo Court reached out to me with an idea for a review as they began to promote their upcoming album, ‘This is Kangaroo Court‘. It really felt like someone placing their firstborn in my arms, trusting me with all their hard work, and asking me to judge them on it. Jake jokes if I do end up hating the album, I might be able to take it a bit easy on them. There are no worries there, as I previously knew that the four of them were spectacular musicians but they blew me away with their first album. They speak of some inspiration behind this album being the general idea of a ‘kangaroo court’, which for those of you who don’t know is defined as “an unofficial court trying someone as guilty without good evidence”. The feelings of helplessness, chaos, and anticipation are so well executed in each and every song, and across the album as a whole that I’m left wondering if some kind of magic is involved in their recording process.
Click to read Kangaroo Court’s album release interview.
1. ‘Order’
Kangaroo Court starts off this single, and by extension the album, with something crunchy and deep. the catchy riffs disorient you in the chaotic soundscape they create throughout this song. The swoops, catches and pauses, and overlapping guitars all come together to create something deliciously confusing. The sharp, shouting vocals and jaunty guitar lines are a beautiful introduction to what is to come from these fellas. The drummer creates obsession, tight and groovy without being overbearing. The reverb-filled, space travel bridge around 3 minutes in is a great pause for a breath of fresh air before being dunked head-first back into the sludge of guitar and deep synth that finishes off the song. You’re left with a buzzy feeling like a soft hangover, unsure if you’ve been pushed forward or captured down into a loop.
“We are judge, jury, and executioner”, Jake states that he is no lyricist, and that the sounds of the album take center stage, but the lyrics in this are a little too on the nose for such humility. The album, centered around a rigged political landscape and feelings of being lost, stuck, and out of control are perfectly captured in this single. ‘Order!’ is the swirling nightmare that I keep coming back to, masochism or good songwriting
2. ‘Right on’
The intro to ‘Right On’ could be Black Sabbath’s grandson, that metal inspiration shining through and thickening out the landscape of the vaguely cheery melody that comes in. This combination makes it sound much more ominous, hazy, and dream-like. Being the second song on the album is a great spot for ‘Right On’, the sound diverging enough to continue to show the band’s skill, but keeping the building vocals and jagged guitar lines that are paradigm to Kangaroo Court’s sound. The chaos behind each song really captures the concepts and inspiration behind the album well. Even if one didn’t know the thematic inspiration behind the band name, the sense of unease and foreboding carries through the songs, and ‘Right On’ in particular. I most enjoy the ending; it feels like it finishes on a half-formed thought or stumbling over a step for half a second. They execute that feeling so well, I suspect due to the fade out of deep guitars
3. ‘grandpa ted’s big adventure’
As number three in the album, ‘Grandpa Ted’s Big Adventure’ sets its tone as something a bit more fun. The rattle-between-your-teeth production in the guitars feels almost like listening to the band live, this translated into recorded music is an impressive skill for a first album. The mixture of vocals and deep-in-your-bones buzzy guitar sound is like salt-and-vinegar, but combined with their thick bass lines and sharp cymbals takes the song over the edge. Where ‘Right On’ is straight-up dark, ‘Grandpa Ted’s Big Adventure’ is quirky. They really excel at writing these melodies to be catchy and upbeat without losing that garage rock crunch.
It is their second longest song, at 5 minutes and some change, but the breakdown around 3 minutes in keeps the song from feeling like it is dragging on and simultaneously allows that metal inspiration and punchy guitar to shine. This song is the gasping breath after a long run, that rising tension in your chest after something really exerting. It’s frustrating and angry, building an intense and focused energy to the King Gizzard-inspired playfulness at the end of the song that makes that emotion feel disorientating and scattered.
4. ‘something’s gotta give’
Out of the three singles, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ is my favorite, and according to Jake, most of their fans’ favorite as well. It is no surprise why, the song excels at making you want to move and dance. Clear vocals, moments of clarity, and simplicity combined with the changes to absolute noise and buzz make it a well-balanced and excellent song. The chorus manages to be a great settling place without being boring or too soft, it progresses the song forward wonderfully. ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ is delirious, scattered, and delightful. It is like sour candy dissolving the lining inside your mouth, leaving that tingly feeling but also making you want one more, just one more listen.
Another song with melodies that feel at ease, painfully too cool in its catchiness. They capture your attention and make you want to dance, and they know it, they don’t need to try any harder to be cool and mysterious. It’s authentic and capturing. I love the guitar lines on top of each other, the slight edge of overlap hangs over like a fun mirror. The ending of the song spirals into deconstructed chaos, a consistent theme throughout the album.
5. ‘recess’
Much like ‘Right On’, the interlude, ‘Recess’, has an opening that sings of metal inspiration, the white noise of it feeling new without being too much. This interlude feels like stalking through a dark hallway, looking over your shoulder in anticipation. It uses each second to keep you on your toes and feels like a playground for their more psychedelic inspirations to frolic about.
6. ‘what are the chances’
The guitar line moving from ‘Recess’ into ‘What Are The Chances’ is familiar, a bit of jingly melody quickly dipping into that compressed metal sound again. It is head-bobbing, simple, and bare. The soft guitar line under the verse compliments the vocals, keeping that gentle sense of foreboding going then backs off to let you feel like you might have reached a soft conclusion here in track 6. This song feels like their chance to show they can excel in the slower, gentler moments as well. “What Are The Chances” is a great lyrical line for that self-deprecating acceptance of some great unfair decision, of gritting your teeth and moving forward. I appreciate that they allowed themselves to show off a bit of a break in their compression and chaos, but the end trails off in an uncharacteristic way compared to the other songs.
7. ‘Spark Ranger’
Instead of building up like some of the other songs on the album, ‘Spark Ranger’ starts off immediately with strong guitar melodies and catchy lines, but the vocals and bass really are the stars of the show for this song. The build-up around the 1:30 mark with the vocals gives me goosebumps just about every time and I promise it is just as good, if not better live. The placement of this song is another strong point for the album, it continues the progression of energy to push the album forward. The timing of the entire album is well executed, and I don’t find myself getting stuck in any ruts or pauses.
8. ‘all is for all’
A third metal-inspired intro, a nice continuation of some of the melodic themes introduced in ‘Spark Ranger’. The back and forth of the song helps with those feelings of pandemonium we hear in ‘Right On’ and ‘Grandpa Ted’s Big Adventure’ and that seems like an essential bullet point for the album. Some of the strongest work for their drummer, Cody It’s well placed at track 8, leading you down to the end of the album as it becomes more and more chaotic. The feeling from ‘Recess’ is continued as well, running down a never-ending hallway in anticipation but also adds some dark dread. It may be the only song that suffers from a bit of repetition sickness and is one of their longer songs at just shy of 5 minutes.
9. ‘adjourned’
There is a jarring difference between the finale and the rest of the album, it feels like waking up from a fever dream and laying back down to psychoanalyze what you’ve just experienced. Kangaroo Court is our trip sitter, stepping in to calm us down after the heart-racing helplessness and premonition they just instilled in us. I like that the song is stripped back and calm, the album really benefits from this moment, but the song could’ve been cut a little shorter. Talking to them, they are adamant about their love for a winding ballad at the end of the album, but I find it waltzes around a bit with no satisfying conclusion. We get to hear a different flavor of the lead vocals from Jake. The ending keyboard lines are a great resting place, even if it is not the note I would’ve preferred we left on.
Overall, I am impressed with the fluidity between their songs. It is an advanced skill and thought for a smaller band to even be thinking about, much less executing in their first album. They were successful in harnessing the emotions behind their inspiration and getting each song to progress them forward throughout the album. Ultimately, if a listener enjoys the raw energy of garage rock or the emotional journeys in psychedelic rock then ‘This is Kangaroo Court’ is an essential album to check out.
My only major criticism is the length of the album at 9 songs, I think it could’ve used maybe just one more song to fill it out. I would’ve loved to hear them explore the softer sounds shown in the finale song, ‘Adjourned’, some more, expanding on the more downtrodden side of their emotional horizons.
Album Q&A
Q: How would you describe this album to someone whose never heard your music?
To someone who has never heard our music, I would describe it as having lots of twists and turns, highs and lows, but almost always keeping the melody at the forefront. Whether the part is fast, slow, clean, distorted, we hope it gets stuck in your head.
Q: What are the major themes/what are you trying to say through this album?
This album definitely serves as an introduction to the band as a whole; lyrically the album touches on some political and existential themes and also introduces some characters and lore that we hope the listeners can attach some of their own meaning towards. One of the major themes of the album is that modern life, especially under capitalism, feels like you’ve been put on trial in a kangaroo court; we are thrust unwillingly into strange systems controlled by apathetic elites where everything seems intentionally rigged and unfair. To top it off, it always ends with a death sentence.
Q: What are the major influences for this album?
Many of our influences for this record, at least sonically, come from psych and garage punk bands like King Gizzard, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Thee Oh Sees, Post Animal, etc. We even had Cory Hanson of the band Wand contribute some mixing, so those influences definitely come through. There are also more sonically dense songs on the album which include piano and synthesizers where we took influence from bands like Radiohead and The Voidz, as well as some softer psych-pop bands like Crumb.
Q: You guys are playing your album release show at Lincoln Hall. That’s big time. How is everyone feeling? Anxious? Nervous? Excited?
Playing Lincoln Hall for the album release show had actually been somewhat of a pie-in-the-sky type dream for us since we started the band, but I think we said it out loud so many times that it ended up coming true. We are all so stoked for that show; we just want it to be one big celebration with all our friends and families and all the cool people that we’ve met in these different communities since we started Kangaroo Court. We’re also so happy to have some of our best friends opening the show for us in The Courts and The Knee Hi’s. Maybe a bit nervous (at least about selling all those damn tickets) but mostly just grateful.
Q: How long did this project take from start to finish?
Many of the songs have been written and rewritten over the past two years, but the recording process began this past December, and the songs were fully mastered by June, so about 6 months.
Q: What was production like for this album?
The recording process was cool because it was our first time in a professional studio (we recorded at Earth Analog Studio owned by Matt Talbott of HUM). Our engineer James Treichler ended up being massively helpful to the album and it would not sound nearly as good without his expertise and guidance. After recording, we outsourced the early rounds of mixing to Cory Hanson, but it proved a bit difficult to work from different sides of the country, so we ended up enlisting James to mix it to our exact specifications. Over the next few months, James mixed the record while I stared over his shoulder and had him try endless variations until it sounded just right. This process was slow moving and my neurotic tendencies shined through but in the end, I was very glad we didn’t settle.
Q: Was there anyone outside of the band who had a major influence on this album?
As I mentioned, our production/mixing/mastering engineer James Treichler was incredibly helpful and influential with regard to how the recorded tracks sound. I would also venture to say that everyone who has seen us live since we started the band had some influence as well; we had been playing these songs live and continuously crafting them for over a year by the time they were recorded. We saw how the audience responded to each track and used this feedback to rewrite and restructure certain parts in order to get the absolute most out of every track.
Q: What are your favorites off the album? What was the most fun to make? What was the worst?
Each song on the record has probably been my favorite at one time or another. The final track, “Adjourned”, definitely feels the most personal to me; I have always been a sucker for a slow melodic ballad at the end of an album. The interlude track “Recess” has also become one of my favorites. It is haunting and strange and I haven’t heard much else out there that sounds quite like it. “All is for All” was one of the more challenging ones to get right during the mixing phase as it incorporates elements of drum n bass, but we ended up adding some heavy synth bass to the track and it quickly became another favorite.
Q: Were there any good behind-the-scenes stories I should know?
We started recording the album shortly after Cody and I went to the psych rock festival Desert Daze out in California. Seeing psych music at is absolute best like we saw throughout that weekend really helped inspire us to refine the songs even more and ultimately reach a point where we felt ready to record the entire album. It’s easy to get complacent when playing local shows again and again, but that festival was a wake-up call for how hard we had to start working in order to reach our potential.
Q: How did you go about deciding order / what songs made it on the album?
There are a couple of fan favorites that we play live that didn’t end up making it onto the record (sorry to all the “thousand howdies” fans out there). This wasn’t too tough of a decision though as they didn’t quite match the sonic themes of the album and I felt that we could still make some improvements to the way these songs are arranged. We definitely plan on recording and releasing them sooner or later.
The order of the tracklist took some toying around with and it was difficult to fully decide on until the songs were closer to being finished. We always knew “Order!” would start off the record and we knew “Adjourned” would be the closing ballad, so for everything else we just had to decide what flowed the best based on energy, transition, length, etc.
Q: What made you decide to release the singles as the singles? You had “Something’s Gotta Give” and “Spark Ranger” out previously and now you’re about to release “Order!”.
“Something’s Gotta Give” had been a fan favorite since we played our very first live sets; people would always ask about that song more than any other so we knew it had to be the first single. Our second single was initially going to be “Grandpa Ted’s Big Adventure” but all the experts tell you not to choose a six-minute track as a single so we decided on “Spark Ranger” instead. We had a few different ideas for what the third and final single would be, but as the mixing process ensured, it became pretty clear that “Order!” had a certain feral quality that we all couldn’t get enough of.
Q: Do you feel the lyrics are a major aspect of this album?
I’m certainly no Elliott Smith and lyrics aren’t quite as important to me in songwriting as the rhythmic and melodic aspects. I like to have a theme or a story in mind when writing lyrics, but I focus much more on how the cadence, flow, and especially the consonant and vowel sounds interact with the overall rhythm/melody. Singing a word with a hard “a” vowel sound gives my voice a different tonal quality than a hard “a” or “e” sound, so I try to choose words that feel right when singing them in the context of the song. I like to treat the voice as an instrument as much as possible; this results in some vague lyrics at times, but it lets me focus more on the sonic elements of songwriting.