Wheelchair Sports Camp is the Denver-based musical project spearheaded by Kalyn, the emcee/producer of the group. They had their breakthrough moment in 2016 when they released their full-length album, No Big Deal. Since that time, there have been a couple of singles, sit-ins, and a mayoral campaign, but no full-length album. Well, as it turns out, they had been busy working on a production of Alice in Wonderland at the Phamaly Theater Company, creating an original soundtrack for the play. It’s now here in the form of Alice in Wonderland (Original Theater Soundtrack).

PHAMALy (Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League), was founded in 1989 in Denver. It eventually evolved, and they got their own theater, rebranding themselves as Phamaly Theater Company, with a dedication to exclusively featuring actors with disabilities. As far as pop musicians scoring plays, there isn’t a huge precedent for this type of work, but it is out there. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Tom Waits’ work in the ‘90s, when he wrote music for plays such as The Black Rider, Woyzeck, and or course, Alice. Now, when Wheelchair Sports Camp is working on their own material, it’s usually delivered with this brash mix of punk, hip hop, and jazz that gets right up in your face with it’s absurd humor and anarchist politics. For a theatrical soundtrack, you obviously have to dial this back, at least for stretches at a time before you can pick your moments to go wild. This is where Alice in Wonderland becomes such a fascinating project for Wheelchair Sports Camp. Without this collaborative project, you might not have heard them making instrumental hip hop that sounds like Tom Waits or Califone, but it turns out that not only can they do that, they can do it extremely well. It’s creepy and playful, and it keeps building until you get these breakthrough moments, which are also a delight in some very different ways. That’s because you get the wicked humor of “Northside Nursery Rhyme” or the playful “Duchess Doo Wop,” before things really ramp up into the second half of the soundtrack. This is where things also get a bit more R&B in nature, while still remaining pretty experimental, reminding me of early ‘00s His Name is Alive. “Follow Suit” allows Kayln room to shine as an emcee with some pointed lyricism about conformity and power structures. “FTQ” is a modern soul banger with some sneaky smart lyricism once again. Then, just when you think you’ve heard it all, Wheel Chair Sports Camp surprises you once again with the closing number, “Let’s Toast (Tea Party Reprise),” which sees them take Abba through the looking glass to create a wonderfully eerie dance party.

No Big Deal was one of the best albums of the 2010s, so following it up was always going to be a tough thing to run back. Fortunately, Wheelchair Sports Camp instead darted off into a completely new direction and have given us an inventive, challenging, and unexpected project that is so clever and layered, you’ll be discovering something new each time you listen to it.