By turns aggressive and elusive, abrasive and romantic, Return to Cookie Mountain is an anthem for uneasy times. From the heartsick horn sample that kicks off “I Was a Lover” to “Wash the Day”’s sitars, car bombs, and diamond-encrusted guns, this Brooklyn quintet conjures a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape, then surveys the sonic ruins. The stunning, propulsive “Wolf Like Me” makes vampires look like sissies, while “Dirtywhirl” conflates hurricanes, the Hindu goddess Durga, and “the flesh of a girl.” Tunde Adebimpe’s steely tenor has been compared to Peter Gabriel’s, but it’s more expressive than that. On tracks like the hard-driving dirge “Blues from Down Here,” he sounds like nothing so much as the late Arthur Lee from Love: supple, menacing, and a trifle unhinged. With Kyp Malone’s eerie falsetto harmonies ringing over the top, the effect is part futuristic doo-wop, part dystopian Beach Boys. Buzzing post-punk guitars and ambient drone, live drums and stuttering processed beats: the arrangements are layered and dense, and the musical influences come fast and furious. By all rights, the whole thing should fly apart, but instead Return to Cookie Mountain achieves a counterpoint as savage as the Mad-Max world it surveys. There’s no one else making music quite like this.

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Apple Music

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