Sean Ono Lennon Talks Dystopian Futures And The Unraveling Of Society

In 2016, Sean Ono Lennon and Primus’ Les Claypool released Monolith of Phobos, their first album as the psychedelic rock duo The Claypool Lennon Delirium. The record served as a commentary on a technological renaissance, an ever-changing landscape of communication and an upheaval of the American political system.

Three years later, The Claypool Lennon Delirium released its second full-length record, South of Reality, an album further exploring the way the world has changed — a deliberation between perception and reality. If the band’s debut reflected an ethos of uncertainty and turmoil, their sophomore effort acknowledges that we’ve entered a different dimension.

“So many of us feel that we're in the same world we grew up in,” 43-year-old Sean Ono Lennon explains. “Cars still have wheels and gravity still goes down towards the earth, but it feels like something’s wrong, like we've gone through a wormhole into a parallel universe. That's why we called the record South of Reality. It's not like we’re totally on the opposite end. We're just on a slightly alternate timeline.”

From July 23 through August 7, the band hits the road with The Flaming Lipsto deliver kaleidoscopic cries from Wichita to New York. At their performances, Lennon and Claypool will offer thought exercises through the metaphors of their music. And while the Delirium’s tunes rarely address philosophical meanderings in clear terms, Lennon enthusiastically considers such questions on a couch in his practice studio.