In late 2016 Joseph Quinn (Grazing Saints) and Lizzy Burt (Woodland Creatures) were brought together to build a project from the ground up as ORGANISMS. What birthed out of that recording process was Mollusk, an eccentric, personal and sensual album. To contain this record within any one genre would be incredibly insulting to the music on offer within these 9 tracks. The opening track of the album, Waves, starts off with this creepy and yet soothing bass that slowly builds until Quinn throws his vocals at the track. The song is so dark and psychedelic it's hard to process all 6 minutes of it even after 4 listens, and I still don't think I've processed it in it's entirety. However, it's such a brilliantly low key performance by Quinn and Paul Taylor's bass guitars are so hard hittingly abusive, it's hard not to fall in love with the track. Something I would have enjoyed more on this is more of Lizzy Burt's soothingly iconic vocals, to lessen the overbearingly dingy theme and the crawling creepiness of the track.
Green Grass is one of the moments where I feel that Lizzy Burt takes centre stage and really demonstrates her very unique voice, which makes the story and the emotions a lot more evident and high key than you would find in a Quinn dominated track. This isn't necessarily a positive negative, it does mean that if you prefer one or the other then there is a lot on this album for you either way. What strikes me about this record is that Burt's and Quinn's incredibly contrasting vocals have mixed together so brilliantly well that at no point will you feel one drowning the other out in a way that wasn't intended. And that is an incredibly important aspect when you have two led singers because there are many aspiring super groups that leave the studio without a single good record because their voices don't mix.
Something I love most about this record is the strong psychedelic, emotional vibes that ooze out of this record. Some of it is so hard hittingly obvious it'll smack you in the face. However, some of it will go right over your head for the first few lessons, much like the song, Astril Body Hair. This song left me thinking it was reptitive and not up to much with the first listen, but after a few more I found the subject matter and this rapidly became one of my favourite songs. I would definitley reccomend this album to anyone looking for some very pure, yet somehow very rough prog rock with a blaringly obvious pschedelic overtone.
7/10