Further proof 2018 is off da rails, Murder By Death are bringing us a sci-fi concept album (paraphrasing):
'As an enormous glacier-sized heap of discarded Hootie & The Blowfish cassettes threatens to wipe out life as we know it, a rag-tag team of Hollywood heroes led by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are called out of rehab to rescue mankind.
Long story short, David Hasselhoff accidentally blows up the moon, making him quite unpopular on Earth, yet still hugely popular in Germany.
Meanwhile, the members of Indiana alt. country band Murder By Death quietly step in to save civilization, or, at the very least, those who contributed to the band's recent Kickstarter campaign...
The few thousand who collectively contributed over $300,000 to the band's third crowd-sourcing campaign, get the ultimate hipster bragging rights by putting Earth in the proverbial "cracked rear view" and being among the first to explore "The Other Shore", a dark, yet inviting world full of strange possibilities.
The rest - sad to say - are screwed, left to ponder what could have been while streaming the new Darius Rucker album in a Hell of our own making.'
Can't say Murder By Death didn't try to warn us, though.
The Other Shore, the band's world-weary sci-fi lullaby is a mood-altering mash-up of "Unforgiven" meets "2001" with Adam Turla's voice providing the sort of narration that respects the listener enough to not sugarcoat a dire diagnosis.
The album bristles with a doomed resignation that, presuming we buy into the concept, makes each song sound posthumous on first-listen. We on Earth, the real doomed souls, are left to wonder if Tarla & Co. made it safely to "The Other Shore" or if, one by one, they succumbed to madness.
On the floor, a note scribbled in haste:
"I begged forgiveness
I've been such a fool
Lost and alone
I spoke your name out loud to the room
Traveling far to be where you are"