The Claypool Lennon Delirium

The pairing of two boundary-pushing figures from rock’s outer edges felt inevitable once their respective backgrounds entered the equation. While the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger served as opener on Primus’s 2015 tour, Sean Lennon shared stages with the band’s bassist Les Claypool; an onstage run-through of “Southbound Pachyderm” demonstrated to Claypool that John’s son possessed genuine instrumental command, prompting the pair to form a new group. The Claypool Lennon Delirium convened at Claypool’s Rancho Relaxo studio outside Sonoma, California, where the musicians’ shared histories shaped an expected sonic palette. Their first single, the eight-minute “Cricket and the Genie,” careens across psych rock, prog, acid, abstraction, and experimental pop in continuous flux. Monolith of Phobos, the project’s debut album, arrived in June 2016. The following April the band issued Lime and Limpid Green, a four-track covers EP timed exclusively for Record Store Day. South of Reality, their second studio album, followed in February 2019.