“And I tried not to mention ‘rainbows’ either, but it’s in there every now and again.

“If you look at the lyrics, I don’t know if I mention the word ‘goblins’ even once in the entire thing,” he says. “It’s very relevant to what’s going on with the planet.”īut how do you write a socially conscious concept album about rainbow-ingesting goblins? That’s one tricky balancing act between campy escapism and metaphorical commentary, and Claypool admits he struggled to avoid falling totally into parody. “It’s about the people in power taking more than their share and the adverse effects of that-and the masses coming together and overpowering those entitled powers,” Claypool says of the LP’s notso-hidden themes. But the experimental rock trio also tapped into a real-world relevance, one particularly surprising for an album of “goblin rock.” Where much of the band’s work is driven by pure irreverence (1995’s Grammy-nominated “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver” from Tales From the Punchbowl has lost none of its wackiness over the past two decades), their new color-coded fantasias tap into the modern malaise of Trump’s America. That contrast also defines The Desaturating Seven, which-like Primus’ most distinctive work from the mid- ‘90s-thrives on the border of cartoonish and creepy. You associate rainbows with freedom and liberal thinking and progressive sexuality, so to see these joyous, vibrant colors in this dark context was very interesting.” It’s dark, but it’s also beautiful and vibrant and colorful. But I was mostly taken aback by the artwork. The story has the dark elements of some of the old Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which are creepy and horrifying. I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ I just started reading through it. So I went in one night years ago, and there was this goblin book.

And every now and again, I’d be the guy going in to read. “They were avid readers, and before they could read, my wife was reading to them every night before bed.

“My kids have shitloads of books,” says the 54-year-old singer/bassist and father of two. The animated text, he jokes, “was brought to by a raven on a stormy night.” That’s a fitting origin story for such a kaleidoscopic album which, like the Italian illustrator’s innovative fairy tale, follows a group of gluttonous goblins on their ill-fated quest to devour the colors of the rainbow. Les Claypool didn’t have to strain finding the inspiration for Primus’ ninth LP, The Desaturating Seven, a proggy conceptual suite framed around Ul de Rico’s psychedelic 1978 children’s book, The Rainbow Goblins.

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