Video premiere: Westerner, ‘Hell Is Dull’

Kevin Bronson on August 18th, 2022

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If we can indeed find love in these times of apocalypse — as the Hinduist title of Westerner’s album “Kali Yuga Kama Sutra” suggests — maybe the L.A. trio’s music can be the beacon.

It could at the very least be the soundtrack. The album, out Friday via Coconut Spaceship, is a long, strange trip through neo-psychedelic rock, spacey synth-pop and euphoric disco. Antecedents are tough: Foals if they were an ’80s pop band? A more fully formed Babe Rainbow? A less experimental James Supercave? Django Django in a dance club? Pink Floyd if they knew all the music that came after them?

Anyway, it’s been an equally long journey for frontman Cooper Bombadil, bassist and keyboardist Brandon Valerino and drummer Mike Gattshall, who started releasing singles from the album more than two years ago. “We’re aiming to push the limits of the frontier of modern music,” Bombadil says of the record. “The album’s name, ‘Kali Yuga Kama Sutra,’ encapsulates the spectrum of the sound in terms of the dark and light that it explores. I like things that are opposites and how when you put them together their opposite nature has a tension to it. It creates an edge-of-the-world kind of feeling.”

The final single “Hell Is Dull” is what’s in the pipe you should be smoking. Like a lot of “Kali Yuga Kama Sutra,” it has an irresistible groove. And the synths may be woozy, but Bombadil’s vocals are immaculate — another calling card of the album, along with some serious bass and drum gymnastics (i.e., “Nothing Personal”). “Hell Is Dull” is a song whose buzz lingers after the party is over.

Speaking of which, the video for “Hell Is Dull” is directed by Selena Moshell, offering a close-up view of a house rager we’re sorry we missed. Don’t miss the one on the album.

||| Watch: The video for “Hell Is Dull”