Quinn Walker: Laughter’s An Asshole / Lion Land

Brooklyn songwriter Quinn Walker is a certifiable oddball. Not only is his debut for half of Coco Rosie’s Voodoo Eros full of cultish chanting, vocals blending Leonard Cohen and The Bee Gees, psychedelic acoustica, bizarre keyboards, and uniquely plucked guitar, all of which ends up somewhere around Frank Zappa jamming with a member of the Animal Collective. Not only all of that, but he’s got the balls to give you a whole two album’s worth of it. Perhaps it was a little too ambitious right out of the gate ’cause both albums are occasionally spotty, sometimes wading a little too far into the deep end of the kiddie pool. It’s often hard to tell if he’s just insane or if he’s trying to make you that way. Yet, when he appears to relax, Quinn’s more composed and lucid moments provide us with some of the most moving and ethereal freak folk on the market since Syd Barrett wandered off into his own head never to return. It’s like Danielson with a few less people and more politics. Pool the best of both works into one and you’ve got an instant classic.