The Claypool Lennon Delirium – ‘The Great Parrot Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy’ album review: A fantastical attack on AI that leans on the right side of psychedelic charm
Back with their third album, The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy, The Claypool Lennon Delirium set their surrealist target on the scourge of generative AI with a theatrical psychedelic prog sound that isn’t anywhere as annoying as it sounds.
The Skinny: A joint effort between Sean Ono Lennon and Primus bass slapper Les Claypool, the Delirium duo regale the fabulist tale of one Hippard O Campus Jr’s efforts to fight his father’s Cliptron AI robots’ automated expanse across the land of Cliptopia and turning humans into robotic paperclips. Across the sea to the Isle of Lucidity lies the Golden Egg of Empathy that can thwart the Cliptron army with some much-needed compassion and understanding.
It’s on the nose, but no more unsubtle than the comic satires floating around P-Funk’s cosmology or the unwieldy Zappaverse. Brewing some of Nick Bostrom’s paperclip theory, the idea that an AI could lead to the destruction of humanity via the benign creation of paperclips and stopping at nothing to carry out the task, Lennon pulls his oft-chaotic and incoherent political takes so readily shared on X in a more intriguing direction, weaving a fanciful thematic landscape befitting the record’s “progadelic” fun house.
The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy sputters and whirrs like a bizarre contraption in a Dr Seuss book, its skewed arrangements and instrumental clank whisking you away somewhere transportive, wherever that is. Longtime Primus fans will recognise Claypool’s cartoon honk on cuts like ‘The Wake Up Call’ or ‘Cliptron Scuttle’, all dwelling in the bowels of their proggy spaceship with the most absurdist bluster.
However, while detractors can find such throbbing Looney Tunes rock grating in isolation, Claypool benefits from Lennon’s chromatic counter to render his warped excursions tolerable for the record and story. Illustrating the chorus of voices and characters in their conceptual tale – also featuring Willow as the “sacred feathered Goddess who holds the egg-shaped key” – Lennon manages to pull the politically-charged whimsy to an evocative plane, from ‘WAP (What a Predicament)’s swinging jam and ‘Heart of Chrome’s lysergic harmonies.
If you’re willing to enter The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s unveiled world with an open mind, and fight through the initial reactions against the seemingly disjointed eccentricity, The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy does wander a beguiling terrain of kaleidoscopic escapism packed with the right degree of social critique that’s hard not to root for.
Standout Track: ‘Heart of Chrome’
The Verdict: Borrowing the best of Lennon’s folk-infused harmonies and Claypool’s comic rock attack, The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy sees the two sonically gel together with surrealist spark and offer a conceptual tale that straddles the right side of theatrical without hurtling down po-faced dead ends.
Release Date: May 1st, 2026 | Producer: The Claypool Lennon Delirium | Label: ATO
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