The Other Planets, Holiday for Vacationers! (Everything Awesome All The Time) (Attention Spaniel/Ears & Eyes)

What could be more enticing than an electric carnival spanning the dimensions of space rock and progressive jazz? On their third album, Holiday for Vacationers! (Everything Awesome All the Time), local, interstellar ringmasters the Other Planets blur genres and contort harmonious conventions in search of such a musical destination.

While they’ve always drawn upon an uncanny ability to open resonant portals amidst apparent bedlam and dissonant chaos, the Other Planets have come together on Holiday for Vacationers! to add a point of emphasis onto their bizarro idiosyncrasies. And for the intrepid listener, this venture may yet divulge an even more enlightening axiom.

The twisted jamboree gets underway with “Paranoia,” a prog rock opus whose grandiose arrangements bond its lullaby chorus to distorted verses and clamoring marches. Throughout the album, instrumental interludes set the tone for ensuing lyric-based numbers. The avant-garde melee, “How’s McClimon Doing?” scribbles its way into the lounging, Ween-like tomfoolery of “Happy Time at the Mall.” The street beats, vocal samples, and ominous grooves of “You Killed Him, Too,” drop atop the beautifully absurd lyrics, aching harmonies, and retro hooks of “Teeth and Dreams.”

“Jerry Lee Lewis: The Video Game” is a frantic breakdown that bears the signature of founder Adam Cuccia. Holiday for Vacationers! provides a vivid canvas for Cuccia to display his lyrical development, and he evokes a flash of Stephen Malkmus on “The Business of Losing Sleep.” Fellow planetary conspirator Dr. Jimbo Walsh lends his compositional wizardry to several of Holiday’s key tracks, but two instrumental gems bear solely his imprint: the winding, rising, and pulsating “Lengua” and the murky, warp-zone trip, “The Hidden Level,” complete with pitfalls and power-ups.

At 17 tracks, Holiday for Vacationers! runs a tad long, and few songs, though sonically fulfilling, could be better fitted to a future extravaganza. Yet, while fairweather tourists may debate if everything is, in reality, awesome all the time, the inclined vacationers know that the holiday doesn’t being until they’ve strapped on a pair of headphones.