In a British rock scene obsessed with nostalgia, Saulo Oliveira S. arrives like a glitch in the simulation — a gleaming anomaly refusing to play by anyone’s rules but his own. Google him and you’ll fall into a rabbit hole of magazine covers, fashion shoots, and think-pieces calling him the “Prince of Rock.” But behind the sleek aesthetic is a mind deeply steeped in British literature, mythology, and philosophy — and with Do Gears Know They Are Gears?, Oliveira unleashes, once again, the full force of that intellect.
The album isn’t just a collection of songs; it’s a three-act odyssey. A theatrical, metaphysical, deeply narrative rock opera disguised as an indie record — imagine Milton with a Fender Stratocaster or Shakespeare whisper-singing through a synth haze. Thematically dense, musically daring, and lyrically labyrinthine, the project cements Oliveira not only as a songwriter but as one of the most conceptually bold artists of his generation.
Act I: A Lemonade Glass and an Existential Crisis
The journey opens with “Acid Lemonade,” a monologue-soliloquy that plants us beside the nameless protagonist lying in bed, staring at a glass of lemonade and unraveling the meaning of existence. The boredom of routine, the feeling of being a cog in a cosmic machine, the paranoia that reality itself might be programmed — it’s all introduced here in hushed, intimate whispers over a collage of foreshadowing sonic fragments from future tracks.
The motif is unmistakable: everything is connected. “Heading for the end, and ending up on the start,” he sings, establishing the album’s ouroboric structure — a cycle with no clear beginning or end. With this, Oliveira sets a tone rarely heard in contemporary rock: literary, philosophical, yet universally relatable. Everyone has had that midnight stare into the void moment. Oliveira turns it into cinema.
Act II: Westward, Into the Maze
The album’s second act is where the philosophical avalanche breaks loose. “Nighthawks,” “Watchmen,” “Middle Finger,” “Hilltop,” “Westward,” and “Maze” form a suite of existential meditations that spiral deeper into paranoia, dissociation, nihilism, and the big question: Are we living in a simulation?
Oliveira pulls references from everywhere — Philip K. Dick, Greek mythology, classic dystopian literature, even the famously inescapable Beverly Hills Hotel symbolism from “Hotel California.” “Who watches the watchmen?” he asks on the paranoid fever dream “Watchmen,” echoing both Alan Moore and mankind’s maddening loop of infinite regress: if something created this world, who created the creator?
The songwriting flexes are outrageous. Iambic pentameter. Acrostics. Alliteration. Meta-narrative tricks. Dreams within dreams within dreams. “Are you awake indeed, or just dreaming of electric sheep?” he muses, hinting again that nothing — not even the listener’s reality — is safe.
But the masterpiece of this act is “Middle Finger,” a sailor-themed manifesto against conformity encoded with biblical rebellion. Only Oliveira would hide the expression Satanic Mind as an acrostic inside a poetic anti-system anthem whispered like a serpent. It’s subversive, daring, and unapologetically clever — a quiet riot rather than a shouted protest.
Act III: Death, Truth and the resurrection
Where most concept albums stumble in their third act, Oliveira goes operatic. The protagonist finally meets Heathcliff, the mountain-top sage who holds the answers to all existential questions. He receives the truth — but the sheer magnitude of it kills him. A classic tragic blueprint… until Oliveira rewrites the rules.
In a great narrative twist, the hero is resurrected by siren-like voices as he rises from the water, becoming the only soul to obtain cosmic truth and survive it. But the final revelation? That stays hidden from us. Instead, Oliveira ends the album with the cryptic, soon-to-be-iconic line: “It was never lemonade, it was always lemonade.”
Ambiguity becomes the final answer. Did the hero ever leave his room? Was the whole journey a dream dreaming itself? Oliveira ensures we’ll debate this for years just like the spinning of that totem in the end of the movie Inception.
A Signature legacy
What makes Do Gears Know They Are Gears? remarkable isn’t just its braininess — it’s Oliveira’s ability to fuse high culture with rock’s raw pulse. Reversed phrases, whispers, shouts, monologues, pan-effect mixing, mythological nods, philosophical dilemmas — it’s an aesthetic world entirely his own. Not borrowed. Not replicated. Authored.
With this 10/10 sophomore album, Saulo Oliveira S. He creates something so cohesive
that it recalls other successful proposals in their internal hues such as the classic The Dark Side of the Moon or the modern classic When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. In fact, Do Gears Know They Are Gears? is an instant classic for the excellence of its composition.
A boundary-shattering masterpiece, Do Gears Know They Are Gears? isn’t simply heard. It’s experienced. And once you step into its maze, you won’t come out the same.
