The Lickets: The Human Dimension
International Corporation

Quintessential Lickets, The Human Dimension is the latest heady offering from long-time collaborators Mitch Greer and Rachel Smith. Their lives have been advancing in tandem since their last group effort, she issuing the solo release On Little Farm last year under the R.E. Smith alias and he establishing the Amaryllis Recordings label on which it and his own recent recordings have appeared. As fascinating as their solo projects are, there's something undeniably special about the alchemy that emerges when they pool their energies, the digital-only The Human Dimension all the proof needed by way of argument.

As is their custom and want, the duo eschewed writing promo text for the release, deciding instead to let the eight tracks speak for themselves. That won't be an an issue for listeners already conversant with the remarkable body of Lickets-related work they've produced, especially when they'll hear The Human Dimension as part of a continuum. While Greer plays harp and guitar and Smith synthesis and percussion, the material, like every earlier Lickets release, comes across more as a constellation of sound the two have midwifed into being.

Their trippy blend of acoustic folk and New Age psychedelia remains in place, though a few new wrinkles also surface to indicate the group project is still evolving and open to new directional possibilities. One's ears perk up immediately, for instance, when the strangulated cry of a stringed instrument (cello, I'm guessing) appears alongside a dizzying swirl of synthetic pulsations and fluttering flutes during “The eyes of so many glittering stars.” “This is home to the animals who live here,” by comparison, begins in classic Lickets mode with a dazzling tapestry of acoustic guitar picking and harps strums before venturing into other realms, haunted synth-flooded forests among them. Surprise number two happens here when the tune's last quarter shifts abruptly into prog, the bruising throb not totally unlike something King Crimson circa Lark's Tongue in Aspic might have got up to. While not as aggressive, “Creating forms for science and recreation” likewise surprise when it digs into a tribal-funk groove—not the kind of thing generally encountered on a Lickets set.

January 2021