Sunday, February 24, 2013

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Lovelyville (1991)


Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 was a band which emerged from California in 1985. They could best be described as "Experimental Indie Rock" or perhaps Noise Rock, personally I like the term "Indie Rock on cocaine." Their album Lovelyville was released at the band's peak in 1991. Combining elements of Indie Rock and Noise Rock, even with some strange sound collages thrown in. The album even perhaps includes aspects reminiscent of 70's Psychedelic rock and Post-Rock, a few songs, like "Nail in the Head," have segments that, if they had been played by a band like Do Make Say Think, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Most of the songs on the album start as standard Indie Rock songs and proceed to degrade (or perhaps upgrade) to a hectic clamor of instruments. Some turn into a more repetitive and slower Post-Rock-esque ambient tracks. A lot of  the tracks on Lovelyville has a very powerful feel to them, they sound massive, but for as many massive songs there are equally melancholy and depressed songs, like "Nothing Solid" which, despite the screaming vocals, still sounds very mellow, and frankly, sad. And on the other spectrum Maverick and the next two tracks following it are just playful clips of the band messing around. Really the whole later parts of the album after what was probably my favorite track, "Nothing Solid," takes a large turn for the weird. "The Meat Display" especially is interesting, but the track that follows, "Strife is Good," is a plain eerie song which turns into distorted and painful sounding cry of "ow!" The whole ending tracks of the album are quite a trip, and the album ends on a rather ambient, melancholy, droney note.
All in all the album is magnificent, quite astray from most Indie Rock being released at the time, in a very good way. For those who didn't like Caroliner because the band just seemed too bizarre, but at the same time were interested by some of the aspects in their music, this band is certainly something you might want to look into. Even then regardless of what you like you should certainly give this hidden gem a shot.

See that guy, he's a lot like me, he's a lot like me, he's dumb as hell 
See that guy, he's a friend of mine, he's a friend of mine, he's dumb as hell

1 comment:

  1. this is a gr8 fuqing album but i hate the layout / template of the blog

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