Return to Cookie Mountain

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.