People Food have always had a lot going on – on one hand they’ve been making progressive rock and metal for a while now, an always-noble affair. But on the other hand they also run a delicious hot sauce company on the side, formerly known as Pickle Monster, which just merged with Hotbox Philly. Both of these, from what we understand, take a fair amount of work.
So really it’s not just that People Food have had a lot going on, it’s that what they’ve got going on, we’ve been into from the start. We’re big on spice. We love it our headphones and in our… well, just about everything else, and People Food caters to each of these needs. Which explains the ulcers.
But anyway, today we’re actually here to celebrate somewhat of a quantum leap for these already nutty prog professors with an exclusive look at their latest opus, The Organ Tree.
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Where to even begin, other than to just go with it? The Organ Tree has a strong sense of internal narrative, a surprising one even when you consider we’re just dealing with bizarre, tongue-in-cheek song titles that aren’t particularly descriptive and no discernible lyrics (for the most part). We couldn’t claim to know what’s going on as far as any theme goes, but in the end, it doesn’t need one. The music speaks for itself, and that’s something we don’t often find ourselves saying these days.
If we really wanted to overanalyze it, we could potentially think of The Organ Tree as a tree with many branches, but the tree is actually prog. The various branches unfurl across the album as songs, from the coursing, unrelenting salvo of “Neural Cartographer” and “Rage Liver,” which sound like King Crimson if you set them on fire and made them play punk, while songs like “Third Lung” and “Circular Sister” take slightly more modern and chunky approach. In fact, the branches of the prog tree aren’t just songs with People Food, it’s almost like they’re explorations of different offshoots of prog, like math rock, metal, jazz fusion, stoner metal, noise rock, and more.
But there’s a very raw nature to this tree as well, like bark that’s easily broken down just by slightly grazing it – we also get the feeling this vulnerable, unstable nature is completely the intention on The Organ Tree. By the time it’s halfway over, no matter what you’re taking from it in terms of narrative, People Food will win you over with their darker, more bombastic, and minimally calculated style.
If you’re looking for something fun, fried and spacey with the unpredictable elements of Tera Melos or Hyper Olympic, The Organ Tree will check a lot of boxes for you, but truly it is it’s own entity and deserves to be embraced for the unclassifiable odyssey that it is.
(Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more music, check out our Bandcamp compilations here. If you like us, or possibly even love us, donations are always appreciated at the Buy Me A Coffee page here, but if you’re in a generous mood you can also donate to folks like Doctors Without Borders, the PCRF, Charity Water, Kindness Ranch, One Tail at A Time, Canopy Cat Rescue, or Best Friends Animal Sanctuary that could probably use it more – click on their names above to check ‘em out if you’re so inclined. Thanks again!)