There’s something oddly reminiscent of late-’90s infomercials about a woman with Parkinson’s picking up her guitar and quietly dismantling illusionary power structures. The Linda Brady Revival isn’t here to sell you Tupperware, though – she’s cracking open the entire system in a song as explosive as it is controlled, which feels like it could both headline your Friday night out and play over footage of a storm flattening a house of cards. “The Barkers” is a deceptively simple construct. Kenny Aronoff hits the snare, and it’s like the ground you thought was solid has started wobbling, tectonic plates shifting ever so slightly— or maybe not-so-slightly? Do Clowns actually control the Earth’s crust under circus tents? Brady’s guitar floats atop the chaos, weaving itself through the surrealist imagery like a tour guide to a funhouse of horrors. The lyrics sneak up on you, a gentle electric jolt that starts out laughing with you— before you realize it’s laughing at you, for believing any of this made sense in the first place. The clowns, the circus, the world spinning until you lose balance… Were they authority figures, or priests, or some strange hybrid colossus standing on a base of hypocrisy? Both? Neither? Who’s to say?

 

Make no mistake, it’s a cheeky critique that plays hopscotch between profound and absurd. And yet, it doesn’t preach—it prods, it pokes, it downright messes with you. Think Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” but fronting a power-pop outfit with all the veins throbbing neon.

 

So, what’s left after “The Barkers”? A circus that won’t stop spinning – and a chilling realization that maybe we’re all just spinning with it.

This, it turns out, is not a drill.

--Chris the Blogger

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