“Shaolin” opens like the Hiatus Kaiyote take on vintage jazz– Paul Bender’s walking bassline punched by drummer Perrin Moss’s old-school swing, which he’s cut and pasted off the ride cymbal and onto his snare and hi-hat.

We are about to dash off into something wild.Ĭhoose Your Weapon’s first proper track opens from far-off but quickly turns hyper-present and as lead singer Nai Palm invites us in, singing of clasped palms as we drop into the music. Video game start screen voices add to the virtualness of it all. As a child’s toy declares “The Kaiyote’s goes…,” out of the drift a gritty beat arrives–a jostling knock the likes of which have by now become the band’s signature cry.

With its THX-inspired aural bloom, the record’s title track is the sound of an adventure booting up. It’s also long and dense–70 minutes of grooves proffered at a breakneck rate that closes in simple beauty. Hiatus Kaiyote has diversified their song structures and tones in a very real way and, simply put, this is a record with much more in it. Colorful rhythms once more abound, but this time they’re painted across a wider canvas. While the band’s central sense of groove is still intact, what Choose Your Weapon offers is a broadening of scope. Choose Your Weapon is not Tawk Tomoahawk, in a multitude of ways. Listeners with attachment issues should be forewarned that the new LP has a penchant for leaving a groove just as it seems to be settling in and on a number of tracks, especially in its first half, the shifts can become incredibly frustrating. It’s an ever-shifting work, packed with techniques borrowed from a certain progressive rock tradition that includes Yes and Rush as much as The Mars Volta and prog jazz the likes of Weather Report. After a 3 year wait, fans of Hiatus Kaiyote have finally been rewarded with Choose Your Weapon, the record on which the Australian four-piece opens up their sound into wildly varied new territories.

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