Totem is Pygmy Lush’s fourth album and was initially recorded in 2016, but the band entered an indefinite hiatus before it could be released.  With Pygmy Lush now reanimated, it has thankfully been saved from the recording archives to herald their return.

Pygmy Lush are arguably the very definition of ‘post everything’.  They are the project that three members of pageninetynine went on to found after the dissolution of that band.  And musically, they draw greedily yet inventively on a palette of influences that span from hardcore to gothic Americana, by way of noise rock and even a dash of grunge.  This is their first full-length since 2011’s Old Friends, and it manages to conjure an atmosphere where each of the elements feels warmly familiar yet, at the same time, strangely unsettling as they continually morph and reformulate in quite unexpected patterns.

Jarring post-hardcore eruptions, such as the opener House Of Blood (Butch’s Monster), form the album’s abrasive scaffolding.  However, it is on the more experimental tracks where the band hit their most compelling stride.  From the eerily propulsive drone of Algorithmic Mercy (Prayers Printed Directly Into A Shredder) to the languorously escalating February Song, and from the darkly infectious The Puppeteer to the expansively shimmering close of Nonsensical Whimper, it is an album that teases and distorts its inspirations into alluring new shapes. It proves a richly hypnotic soundtrack to a world that seems to be inexorably, inescapably disintegrating before our very eyes.