The Claypool Lennon Delirium

About The Claypool Lennon Delirium

The Claypool Lennon Delirium is what happens when Les Claypool of Primus and Sean Lennon decide they're not weird enough on their own. The duo came together in 2015, though they'd been orbiting each other for years. Claypool had played with Sean's mom Yoko Ono, and the two bonded over a shared love of prog rock excess, psychedelic tangents, and music that makes normal people uncomfortable at parties.

Their first album, Monolith of Phobos, dropped in 2016 and sounded exactly like you'd expect a Claypool-Lennon collaboration to sound. Which is to say it was all over the place in the best possible way. The record mixed Primus-style bass gymnastics with Beatles-esque melodicism, filtered through about seven layers of LSD-tinged weirdness. Cricket and the Genie was the lead single, a swirling nine-minute thing that name-checked movement one of Strawberry Fields Forever and somehow made it work. The whole album felt like it was recorded in a submarine traveling through both inner and outer space simultaneously.

What makes the project work is that it's not just Claypool being Claypool with Sean along for the ride. Lennon brings his own prog and psych-pop sensibilities, the stuff he'd been exploring on his solo records and with The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger. The two share vocal duties, trade off on guitar and bass, and generally seem to be having the kind of fun that comes from not having to worry about commercial expectations.

They followed up with South of Reality in 2019, which somehow managed to be even stranger than the first record. The album tackled everything from conspiracy theories to environmental collapse, wrapped in paisley-patterned musical passages that twisted through prog, funk, and psychedelia. Boriska featured Primus drummer Tim Alexander and felt like it could've been a Primus deep cut if Primus had gotten even weirder. Blood and Rockets, about occultist and rocket scientist Jack Parsons, was the kind of subject matter only this band would tackle.

The live shows lean heavily into improvisation, with songs stretching and mutating depending on the night. They've toured fairly regularly, though not relentlessly, treating the project as something they do when the mood strikes rather than a full-time concern. Both have other things going on, which keeps the Delirium from overstaying its welcome.

They've been relatively quiet since 2019, though neither Claypool nor Lennon are exactly prolific when it comes to any single project. The Delirium exists in that sweet spot where two accomplished musicians can indulge their strangest impulses without worrying about anything beyond making the music they want to hear. It's prog rock for people who think regular prog rock isn't quite excessive enough.

Their shows are exploratory and hypnotic rather than explosive. The crowd gets quiet and focused, tracking the bass lines and waiting for songs to shift shape. Claypool and Lennon seem more interested in the songs than the audience, which somehow makes people lean in harder.

Known for The Golden Ratio, Amethyst, Easily Impressed, Mr. Completely, Hello Starling

See The Claypool Lennon Delirium Live