Album Review: Everything Wrong Is Imaginary

It's often said that the best records come out of intense personal turmoil and Kurt Heasley (who is, for all intents and purposes, Lilys) is certainly no stranger to turmoil. While he was creating the 8th Lilys album, his wife had a psychotic episode and abandoned him. This left Heasley as a single parent of his three children. Putting his family first, Heasley decided to record his guitar and vocal parts at home and send the tracks to producer Michael Musmanno, who filled in the missing spaces with various studio musicians.

The resulting album, Everything Wrong Is Imaginary, is yet another stylistically nomadic record to add to Lilys' impressive canon. The smoothed-out disco funk haze of A Diana's Diana, the Guided By Voices pop of The Night Sun Over Sun Juan and the Pink Floyd tribute that is Knocked On A Fortune Teller's Door all show that Heasley's willingness to experiment hasn't been tempered by his tumultuous personal life. Perhaps the most divergent track, however, is With Candy, a curt, disjointed avant-rock number that features the stinging garage guitar of Heasley's overtly retro period, some of the dreamy sound-waves of his earliest work and some new forays into electronica.

There is a degree of stylistic goofing as Black Carpet Magic jolts from giddy noise to giddy noise and Still In All The Glitter nearly gets lost under its own veneer, but when the music gets too muddled, Heasley's world weary lyrics maintain the album's excellence. No more so than when he sarcastically declares "everyone knows everything" on Black Carpet Magic.

Witty, acerbic and intelligent, Everything Wrong Is Imaginary proves that Lilys continue to brim with imagination and, more importantly, are startlingly able to splinter and bend pop convention.