Since their early days,
Kero Kero Bonito
have excelled at giving their musical directions an extra dose of meaning. When their hyper-pop contemporaries were trying to sound as artificial as possible,
KKB
humanized the style with
Bonito Generation
's songs about parents and graduation, and on
Time 'n' Place
, they used '90s alt-rock to embody the clash between nostalgia and reality that happens while growing up. With
Civilisation
-- which collects 2019's
Civilisation I
and 2021's
Civilisation II
EPs --
magnify their need to understand their place in the world to include humankind as a whole. As
Sarah Midori Perry
,
Gus Lobban
, and
Jamie Bulled
explore the world's urgent but deep-seated issues (war, climate change, tyranny), they encompass the past, present, and future of humanity and their music. The trio returns to its electro-pop roots, but befitting
's subject matter,
adopts a much more complex style to relay the EPs' parallel history of deception, apathy, and destruction. This is particularly true of
's songs: "Battle Lines" throws listeners into a disorienting fray of synths, polyrhythms, and
Perry
's vocals that owes as much to
Ryuichi Sakamoto
as it does to Sun Tzu's The Art of War, while "The River" pulses along on a house-inspired beat as humanity is swept away in a cleansing flood. Arriving just a few months before 2020 rocked the world,
seemed prescient, but
put
in the unique position of being able to respond to the issues they were addressing in more or less real time. Instead of getting even darker, the songs from
respond to the first EP's cautionary tales with fables and stories that incorporate the brighter side of
's music and reflect how we cope with crises. Each song is equally ominous and optimistic, whether it's the brilliantly sprightly yet eerie 8-bit fairytale "The Princess and the Clock," the bittersweet realities of COVID-19 lockdown life on "21/4/20," or the hypnotic finale "Well Rested," which closes with
intoning cryptically, "Doomsday hasn't happened yet -- you cannot stop civilization." To say that the group packs a lot into
's six songs is an understatement, but the results are far from overwrought. Small yet expertly crafted, this is
at their inventive, heartfelt best. ~ Heather Phares