Review: My Octopus Mind, Louisiana

It would be remiss to call My Octopus Mind’s debut album, Maladyne Cave, anything other than a labour of love. Taking several years, multiple line-up iterations, and necessitating songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Liam O’Connell to live in his studio for a year to self-fund, the birth has not been an easy one.

Reading about the album online before the show, I found reference to the extended editing process, the evolution of the band into something new and altogether different, and an ‘impatience’ to have the album heard, and I wonder if I’m attending a launch or a sendoff.

I arrived at the Louisiana in good time to watch The Evil Usses, a Bristol-based four piece, specialising mostly in experimental prog, or as they like to call it “rocky not jazz, jazzy not rock, post-op pop, not much and a lot else”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzCVZJAu9o

Careening wildly through genres with little regard for convention, The Evil Usses swiftly packed out the room, the unassuming Wednesday night crowd appreciatively bobbing along as we shot headlong into what felt like the chase scene soundtrack from a jazz-soaked film noir, shoved inside a gameboy and shaken around a bit. Stellar musicianship, effortless layering and slinky transitions built themselves into cacophonies of idiosyncratic sound.

After a brief respite by the riverbank, the long-awaited moment arrived, and My Octopus Mind took to the stage. Self-proclaimed ‘mad musical experimentalists’, their repertoire is unabashedly dramatic, expressing equal parts wilted melancholy, growling anger, and a playful abrasion. We began with tracks like Fridge Magnets and Welder, the album’s second single, which showcases the band’s heavier rock inclinations and makes us complicit in their frustrations (O’Connell describes Welder as a ‘howl of despair at society’s rampant consumption of resources’).

Before we could get too comfortable with the set-up, we were introduced to Becky and her violin, who joined the band onstage, launching into PinP and causing a tonal shift as notes of melodic agitation melded with frenetic double bass and jarring vocals. During the rest of the set, we hear several songs that are seemingly not to be found on the album we are at the launch of, but rather are from a ‘new endeavour’. One of these offerings, Wandering Eye, contained moments almost in keeping with an uptempo folk jig and had the crowd weaving and bobbing about once again.

As the night drew to a close and following their earlier proclamation that “music is everything to us”, My Octopus Mind took a moment to thank everyone that has contributed in some way to the album, the relief in reaching this moment palpable as they acknowledged “it’s been a long journey”. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see where they head next, but at least for now they can rest in the knowledge that, as they say, the first time is the hardest.

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