Hubba Bubba’s album cover emulates the artwork of the Silver Apples’ protopunk saucer, Contact, like some wicked dèjá vu shit. Much like the 1969 original, this updated rendering features a bird’s eye view of the world seen from the interior of a space shuttle cockpit, albeit with a framed portrait of Brian Eno and pot leaf air freshener situated in amongst a blob of chromatic gadgetry and illuminated screens. While the visual connection between the two album covers is immediately apparent, the similarities between the Apples and Damaged Bug go well beyond a mutual appreciation for intergalactic wanderlust. The glazed synth walls and rusty guitar strums that usher in Hubba Bubba’s first few moments during “Gloves for Garbage” suggest that John Dwyer is in a different headspace creatively since announcing Thee Oh Sees were hitting indefinite Splitsville late last year. Dwyer appears to be in loner mode on the album, a phlegmatic freak tucked away in a tiny hole of the universe where few choose to graze. With Damaged Bug, Dwyer, who recently relocated to Los Angeles, has adopted a new persona that ditches the foaming-mad psychosis of any of his prior engagements for something a tad woozier and alienated. You can sense the apathy in his voice during “Rope Burn” when he proposes to “stick a spike in your vein” over a flutter of spiraling keys and sputtering drum machines. The song revels more in the raga sensuality of the Apples, the bleated post-punk of The Instant Automatons, and the ice-cold clang of the A Frames than it does something analogous to Dwyer’s heartthrob Billy Childish.

Considering this is Dwyer’s most recent experiment outside the realm of performing within a band setting, it’s fitting that Hubba Bubba appears to take comfort in its own detachment from society. There’s a primitive element to the record that feels simple in its presentation and urgent with Dwyer’s accessibility to the nearest tape recorder. Rather than having a group of warm bodies at his disposal, Dwyer’s mad creation instead focuses on whatever instrumentation he readily has available at his fingertips. Songs such as “Photograph” and “Metal Hand” lurk over piles of handcrafted junk electronics and corner store synthesizers that sound treated by Eno himself. There’s a floppy languidness to both tunes that feels artificial in its fabrication, yet Dwyer manages to translate any sense of indifference into something that feels instantly seductive. The same goes for “Wasteland,” which detonates in a fuss of bleeping synths and scampering drums for a good minute before Dwyer questions in his deadpan delivery whether he “is just a waste of life.” Its jammed-out veneer and motorik pulse sounds like a Can throwaway from the vault but rewired by Dwyer into a sonic casserole of retro-punk. While it’s anybody’s guess what sort of life Damaged Bug will take on in the immediate future, it’s revitalizing when one remembers the humble beginnings of Thee Oh Sees, which morphed from Dwyer’s solo bedroom project to a fully-fledged group that killed it one album after the next over a span of 15 or so years.