Grzegorz Kwiatkowski of the Polish band Trupa Trupa is a singer of few, well-chosen words. He addresses uncomfortable truths, the absurdity of life, and turns these terse poems into songs that feel like dreams, charged with spasms of noise, gut-punch bass lines and hypnotic melodies.

Though the band released its debut album in 2015, Of the Sun is its first album to be released in America. It distills what has made Trupa Trupa a mustsee in past years at music conferences such as South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The quartet’s music emerges from a land embroiled in turmoil; Of the Sun was released only months after the murder of their friend and hometown mayor, Gdansk’s Pawel Bogdan Adamowicz. In that sense, they are heirs to a long Eastern European tradition of protest music, from Czechoslovakia’s Plastic People of the Universe and Pulnoc to Russia’s Zooparkand Pussy Riot. The band’s impressive range encompasses the spastic punk of Turn, the wobbly atmospherics of the haunted title track and the angular funk of Dream About. They pull a redemptive refrain from the encroaching nihilism of Another Dayand mock the culture of denial in the surging Remainder.

3.5/4.0

Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune