If Brant Bjork were to be run over by a bus – or presumably a greyhound on a remote stretch of road near Palm Springs – he could gladly croak, safe in the knowledge that his legacy is already more or less set in stone. Well, he did drum in Kyuss, and then there is the small matter of classic Desert Rock solo albums like 1999’s Jalamanta (Duna Rock)…

And yet, with his new album Jacoozzi (Heavy Psych Sounds), Bjork is plainly not just coasting on past glories. Consisting of ten tracks, mostly long, and almost entirely instrumental, the album is a complex, layered beast as Bjork goes on a journey into music and bids us to join him. It’s quite a departure, so much so that when he does finally sing on the last track, ‘Do You Love Your World?’, it comes a bit of a shock.

That said, on a superficial level, it is business as usual. Bjork is very good at finding something that sounds very good and just repeating it because there’s no real need to do much else. Most of his discography has been built on such simple, effective foundations. And at first, Jacoozzi seems to be following that formula, with repeated chords around which layers upon layers of depth are spun.

It tries a lot of new things with that formula. You could listen to the album half a dozen times and still not appreciate all the ideas. That’s what it does well, but also what does it in. The problem, of course, is that the album spends much of its time exploring new ideas but never realises them. By that, I mean it sometimes hits a really good groove, but it’s so caught up in the instrumentations that there is no room for any fun.

And yet in a way, this album makes perfect sense. It sounds like a seasoned musician trying to thrash out a new path for their work while still staying true to themselves. But it is so convoluted, so introspective and ornate, that it feels more like a duty than a joy to listen to.

Maybe this is the album that Bjork needed to make right now, but it isn’t the one you really want to hear. And on that paradox, the record finds itself in a kind of limbo, or perhaps, fittingly, on a desert road with no clear destination on the horizon.

6 / 10

ALEXANDER HAY