7

The Doleful Lions debuted in 1998 with the fairly conventional jangle pop of Motel Swim, but shortly after that album, singer/songwriter Jonathan Scott lit out for the territories, conceptually speaking. Over his next five albums, Scott's lyrics became stranger and stranger, encompassing horror movie tropes, Fortean improbabilities, and fascinations with religions, serial killers, and other topics that, over the years, have led reviewers to quite seriously wonder in print about Scott's own mental stability. At the same time, the sound of the Doleful Lions' albums has moved from the Mitch Easter-produced relative gloss of the debut to the exercises in acoustic guitar and hiss of the two-part Song Cyclops series. Long since down to a duo of Scott and his brother, multi-instrumentalist and producer Robert Lee Scott, the Doleful Lions have thrown out the indie folk sound of their previous work in favor of a brand new interest in electronics. The songs on 7 are built on electronic drums, synths, sequencers, and New Order-like melodic basslines, with occasional distorted guitar lines out of the My Bloody Valentine playbook for color. Lyrically, Scott's new obsessions seem to be numerology (particularly the occult meanings of the numbers three and seven), the occult (although the found-sound monologue about the rebirth of Samhain in the instrumental "Santa Mira" is lifted straight out of the notoriously crappy '80s horror movie Halloween III, so Scott's fascination with cheesy horror flicks remains undimmed), and various obscure philosophies from across the ages. Despite song titles like "The Luminous Sons of the Manvantaric Dawn" and "Here Come the Star Nations," however, 7 is the Doleful Lions' most immediately accessible work since 2000's The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! The Scott brothers sound re-energized by their new musical shift; the genuinely lovely waltz "White Lotus Day" is one of the Doleful Lions' finest, sounding like a collaboration between a particularly stoned Brian Wilson circa Friends and early 20th century mentalist Edgar Cayce. It will do little to assuage those who suspect Jonathan Scott has become the post-millennial Roky Erickson, but 7 shows that the Doleful Lions are still capable of surprise.