I feel the title "Partners in the Crime of Human Evolution" is in itself lovingly nonsensical and rather chaotic - how is human evolution a crime, and how can one be a partner in it? Importantly, it seems valid and unambiguously meaningful at first glance, but it reveals its being upon closer inspection. Really, its absurd quality is hidden in plain sight.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the music it contains immaculately embodies that absurd quality. I've always been in love with music that features that dichotomy - when you listen to small snippets of a song, they certainly sound coherent, but it's only when you give it a full listen that that overarching nonsense becomes apparent.
"Go Mad, Dark Age" does not waste its role as the first impression, immediately kicking off the chaos with a jagged tapestry of illegible TTS speech, sharp bursts of synthesized strings, an almost acid-esque synth bassline whose very pitch and timbre somehow slowly fall apart, and noisy, densely irregular drum stings. Despite all this, in line with the perennial dichotomy, there's definitely a sense of groove here - it's chaos with precision.
"Dogs are Fleshly Material-Semiotic Presences in the Body of Technoscience"... this alone is probably a sentence that was wholly unique to the release's Bandcamp page, at least until I quoted it here! Naturally the track is unabashedly, lovingly bizarre, quickly moving to settle into a ridiculously jaunty but quite catchy jazz-like feel carried by violent waves of double bass. As the TTS rambles on about dogs, the rhythm slowly falls apart into a cavalcade of fills, all still staying grounded by the crazy bassline. It's frankly amazing.
"Smile Less Frown More (But Please Have A Nice Day)" - the title and the song - are definitely the most "normal" of the three. This one features a psychedelic pop arrangement with strings, horns, choir, and a triumphantly steady drum groove that really carries the arrangement. The ambient bridge leading into the restatement of the main theme is just lovely. Appropriately it truly is both the climax of the release and its optimistic payoff.
Frankly all three of these perfectly demonstrate the musical possibility of structural validity in the absurd, but after the unfiltered chaos of "Go Mad" and "Dogs" it's "Smile Less" that also shows the potential for catharsis, musical development done in the least conventional way possible. Concise but effective in its vision, I definitely recommend it if you're a experimental music fan.