Bigelf

Describing L.A. quartet Bigelf involves a swan dive into the adjective grab bag, employing all the clichéd linguistic parlor tricks of the rock critic’s trade to find words for surreal yet disturbingly visceral forces. You know — bombastic, epic, thunderous, mind-bending — all the words you read in rock reviews, secretly wondering if Roget’s Thesaurus had more than a passing hand in the writing process.

Whatever adjectives one wants to use, this is what you need to know about Bigelf: The band taps into three decades’ worth of the rock Zeitgeist, creating a sound that is singular in its ability to emulsify everything from Sabbath-style metal to psychedelic chamber pop to stomping blues-rock to gorgeously orchestral harmonies, complete with saturated string-section embellishments. It sounds positively postapocalyptic, like the cultural cobbling of a fledgling civilization trying to re-create humanity from a handful of dusty LPs. Bigelf’s new-world vision is infectiously dark, darkly comedic, and comically eclectic. Think of it as carnival music for a retro-futurist dystopian theme park. Lay aside expectations, preconceptions, and inhibitions, and Bigelf is sure to confound you anyway.