In 2022, Legendary Pink Dots released The Museum of Human Happiness, their first album since the pandemic. It was one of my favorite albums of that year and, really, one of the finest releases from a band who celebrated their 40th anniversary just before lockdown. Now, two weeks into 2025, they’ve dropped the follow-up, So Lonely in Heaven, via Metropolis Records and I humbly recommend that you listen to the two albums back-to-back. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but from the listener’s perspective, The Museum of Human Happiness and So Lonely in Heaven sound as if they are part of the same extended body of work. 

A little background: Led by Edward Ka-Spel, Legendary Pink Dots is now going on 45 years and, in that time, has amassed an immense discography. All the while, the band of players has changed, as has their sound. Back in 2008, I talked to Ka-Spel about this in what was one of my earliest stories for L.A. Weekly. (Frankly, it’s a little shocking that this hasn’t disappeared from the web, so click the link to read it.) A decade later, after more shifts within the Dots world, I wrote a beginner’s guide to the band’s vast catalogue for Bandcamp. 

Since Legendary Pink Dots are exceptionally prolific, even a five-year-old guide seems a bit outdated, more so considering that The Museum of Human Happiness plays like a rebirth. Although still making psychedelic music that draws from the legacy of German bands like Can, the band let some of early industrial elements— as in klanky factory noises— seep back into the mix. Plus the album, made remotely during the pandemic, addresses the isolation of that time directly in songs like “Hands Face Space.”

Three years pass since The Museum of Human Happiness, the world seems stuck in this timeline where everything sucks, loneliness is said to be one of the biggest of the many issues plaguing this era and the Dots have a new album. The message behind So Lonely In Heaven, which is posted on the Dots’ Bandcamp page, is tied to the idea of machine. “We lost control of it at the instant of its conception,” says the message. 

This, however, is my favorite part of the message: “You may cough, curse and die, but the machine will resurrect you without the flaws, at your peak, smiling from a screen, bidding someone in a lonely room to join you. 

“It’s an invitation from Heaven, where anyone can be anything they want to be, but it’s a Nation of One.

“You’ll be everything we are. You’ll be a shadow of yourself. You’ll repeat yourself— endlessly. You’ll be desperate for some kind of explanation. 

“You’ll be lonely. So very lonely…”

Something I’ve loved about Legendary Pink Dots, really, since I first got into the band back in the ‘90s, is that, lyrically, their songs blur this line between dystopian fiction and dystopian reality. Good stories do that and, maybe, if anyone with a modicum of power bothered to heed the warnings of Philip K. Dick or Octavia Butler or J.G. Ballard or, like, IDK how many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, perhaps the world would not be in such a shitty place today. But, I digress.

I’ve been listening to So Lonely In Heaven without a lyric sheet, but it sounds like there’s a narrative connecting the songs. The title track opens the album, luring listeners into an afterlife that’s not exactly paradise. “In search of a partner, ‘cause one is no fun,” Ka-Spel sings. There are references to an accident made in various songs on the album, the most obvious of which is in “Pass the Accident,” which rattles off a list of the narrator’s organs that have been spread around—“be assured, my true true love, my heart is just for you,” he sings. It’s a story about communication after death as a being that’s not a ghost, which could seem almost like fiction, but, in fact, AI does allow for a sort of digital afterlife and, tbh, our digital footprints are so large and scattered that it’s fair to say that the remains of our online life will linger long after our real one has ended. 

Honestly, this is all heavy, depressing subject matter, but that happens a lot in Legendary Pink Dots songs. (“Just a Lifetime,” the early ‘90s song that was an L.A. goth club hit for years, is really sad when you think about those lyrics.) As with The Museum of Human Happiness, the Dots take on this subject matter with some of their most accessible music to date. It’s still a far cry from pop music, but, if you’ve never listened to the band before, I would suggest starting with these two albums, then jumping back Crushed Velvet Apocalypse or The Maria Dimension and taking it from there.

Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs. Follow on Instagram for more updates.

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