The Incredible Heat Machine [Black LP]

Hailing from Portland OR, TK & the Holy Know-Nothings deliver their much anticipated sophomore album The Incredible Heat Machine. The band is led by frontman Taylor Kingman, whose equally irreverent, delicate, and cerebral first-person narratives somehow merge seamlessly with the group's bar band ethos. The Incredible Heat Machine takes the band's half-facetiously self-described "psychedelic doom boogie" and delves further into the struggles of the working-class musician with themes of substance abuse and redemption, companionship as salvation, and the ever-present shadow of disillusionment. "'The Incredible Heat Machine' is a haunted jukebox on wheels and God's own check engine light," notes Kingman. "It's a locomotive composed of living parts linked by some buck-toothed telepathy allowing it to get down the tracks. No answer or destination, just movement and feeling. It's vulnerable and irreverent. Heavy-hearted and heavy-handed. It's 11 songs recorded live, with no overdubs, as an attempt to justify our questionable existence as serious song-and-dance men in the modern era."