I’m going to be right up front. I struggled with this one. A Prog Rock project out of Paris, France with an album title of “The Fish Who Wanted To Be King” . . . sheer, unadulterated pretension. LALU is the brainchild of keyboardist Vivien Lalu. In the rock world there are a lot of bands billed after the frontperson. Typically, they’re the guitarist and typically they’re over-fed on ego and end up gagging on their own hype. In this case, the project is led by a keyboardist. I can’t even begin to ascertain if there is an ego thing going on here because I can’t get past the idea of keyboardist as the frontman. I know that says more about me and my own bullshit biases than it does about the project, but I’ll own it. So, again, I struggled with this one.

This is the fourth full-length studio album from LALU. There was also a live album in 2015. I haven’t heard a single one of them and based on this album I’m not inclined to. At least not on purpose. To be fair, all the musicians, including the vocalist, are fantastic. They all seem to perform at the virtuoso level. It’s what they do with all that talent that is so distressing. The compositions and even the lyrics are simply too tedious and self-indulgent. I’m just not at all interested in jazz-infused eclectica stuck in the 80’s.

High marks on musicianship, cover art, and production but scrapping the bottom on all else.  Rounds out to a solid mediocre.