Thursday, June 11, 2015

Cassette Review: The Lunch "Thinkin' About Stuff"


[$5 // https://thelunch.bandcamp.com/album/thinkin-about-stuff]

The Lunch has created a cassette called "Thinkin' About Stuff" and while Side A is what you will find on their Bandcamp page, Side B is exclusive to this cassette and I'm pretty sure it really is just a reflection of the title.   Do you know why people like lunch though?  If you work, it tends to be your break for the day but also, I don't really eat breakfast (Sorry, doctors) and dinner is more of that end of the day meal, so I do feel like lunch is the best because you know you've done some stuff already today and you still have time left to do some more.    Well, for me dinner has more of that finality feel to it because we go to sleep somewhat early around here.

Musically, The Lunch is an instrumental rock band that has elements of math rock mixed in as well.   Somewhere between I Kill Giants and Fiesel, they have prominent guitar notes which can seem to sing in place of vocals and then sometimes the bass line seems to take the lead.   It can be clanky and dreamy at the same time, but then also it can pick up the pace and at one point it just becomes downright rowdy.    Bands like Evasive Backflip and, yes, even some sort of elements of The Cure come to mind for me here, even if it's only because it could sound more like a band such as Anberlin or 311 as they cover The Cure than The Cure themselves.

Side B is someone talking over music and what is being said is somewhat disguised in the way that you might find in the "Scream" movie franchise.   At first, he's just listing off types of sandwiches, which makes me think of "Forrest Gump" with Bubba and his shrimp, but I'm not sure it is from any movie or anything because I can't place it as such.   Who knew there were so many different types of sandwiches.    Then he begins to talk about minimum wage and just go into other sort of life advice which reminds me of that one song that someone made once and everyone started using at their graduation ceremonies because it tells you to go out into the world and be what you want or whatever.

Some of my favorite lines from this not-quite-audio-clip are "Name your dog 'dog'", "Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your astronaut training" and "Ask your waitress for a seat for your imaginary friend".   My son actually got a Pound Puppy (You remember those?) for Christmas this past year and he named him "Puppy", so we're kind of on the right track with that one already.   I'm not going to google the title and artist of that graduation song I'm thinking of- you can do that yourself- but this seems to be less constructive version of it but yet I do like it better just because I'm not for all of that "Go be the best you that you can be" crap they try and feed you.

Oddly enough, I recently took a test on Facebook and it told me that I should be a motivational speaker.   If it was given to me by a real person I probably would have told them to fuck off, as that's about as far as my motivation tends to travel.    But as a motivational speaker I must let you know that this is a most excellent cassette and if you are not inspired by Side B then clearly you lack some sort of imagination and/or sense of humor.







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