By Nick Canton

I’ll get this out of the way. When I first heard listened to WLLMSBRG‘s follow up high-concept album wait, pay attention, am I supposed to make a left here?, mixed and produced by none other than Angel and Airwave Tom DeLonge, I didn’t like it.

“Baby you just ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” croons frontman Abraham, and I believed that I had seen nothing.

I know, I know. Me. WLLSMBRG’s biggest advocate, I felt betrayed. I mean, a 107-minute album recorded in 36 minutes, with seemingly no narrative or link tying the tracks together, my thought was “why does this need to exist?”

For longtime fans, this statement makes more sense. WLLMSBRG has been known through their storied career for using the whole buffalo. If they don’t have something to say, they won’t say it. And so to listen to something that I thought was meandering was upsetting to me.  The Lil B collaborations seemed forced, like a decision from the higher-ups at EMI.

Seemed is the key word there. Past tense.

As I started on track 20, my salty tears of betrayal became sweet tears of joy. Very few bands are able to retroactively make you understand something you heard previously. Fewer are able to do that with arpeggiators and vocoder over chopped up samples of Girl Talk’s already chopped up samples.

It’s not considered a Christian album, per se. In the same way that Tyler, the Creator isn’t considered all-ages appropriate, per se.  If you were bummed to hear they had paired with Pepsi, you’ll be pleased to know that it was done in the most tasteful (and refreshing) way possible and Pitbull’s much worried-about product placement for the soft drink empire actually adds to the three tracks it appears in.  “Knives in my eyes, blood on the ceiling, Basedgod take a verse,” Abraham sweetly shouts.  Baby I’ve just seen everything yet.  Overblown?  Perhaps. But when skewed and put under a microscope, it becomes a scathing indictment of our own American lust for the overblown, only to pop a hole and take joy in the deflation.

Nope, you’re still wrong, it was about his mom.

Catch them at 12:35pm sharp today, headlining at TD Garden.