#buffet lunch

The band, out of Glasgow, is a foursome, formed around the jittery energies of singer and rhythm guitarist Perry O’Bray. To this, we add the angular extrapolations of Matthew Lord on lead guitar, the bumptious optimism of Jack Shearer’s bass play and the bashing steadiness of drummer Luke Moran. Someone, though it’s not clear who, plays a bit of organ, weaving carnival bleats and bloops into “Merchandise,” a song that doesn’t so much undulate as wobble like jell-o, climbing up and down the scale notes.

This band can rock pretty hard when it gets a notion, as in the fierce guitar-slashing opening to “Another Face Entirely,” though this resolute opening gives way to more loopy, looping TVP style arabesques. “What’s he burning?” inquires O’Bray, with increasing agitation, the musical wallops and wanders and occasionally erupts in fire behind him. The one I like the best, though, is “Blip” with its tipsy bass line, punctuated by a congratulatory cowbell ping. Punk in execution, with its ragged group vocals and discordant blurts of sax, the song nonetheless slants towards the music hall. It reminds me of another funny, fuzzy band that takes the piss, the Welsh outfit The Bug Club.  

Thinking of the Bug Club, the question arises: how many jaggedly lackadaisical, loosely organized but fizzily fun bands do you need? Two? Five? Unlimited? Maybe make room for at least one more in Buffet Lunch.

Consider, for instance, “Red Apple Happiness,” which dances clumsily to rooty-tooting saxophone and sticks on rims, shifting its weight ponderously from foot to foot like a bear that has recently learned to cake walk. The vocals are a precisely timed shout, unvarying in pitch but flexible enough in emphasis. The singer (so to speak) Perry O’Bray ties up each phrase in a neat bow of rhyming, as the song honks and chortles and winks at us. Yet even so, there are hints of trouble in one guitar rattling away its anxieties and a zig-zagging sax line that can’t seem to find its bearings. And yet, what could be more charming than a cheerful song tipped on its side, all efforts to please intact but coming from such a very odd angle?

Buffet Lunch is a Scottish four-piece, made up of O’Bray plus Neil Robinson on bass, John Muir on guitar and Luke Moran on drums. With a couple of EPs and a string of live shows under their collective belts, the band set out to record in the rural north of Scotland in March 2020 and made much of this album in isolation while the rest of the world careened into pandemic and lockdown. They were mostly done when they went home to the lockdown, but O’Bray recorded two ringers afterwards with Jayne Dent, the ethereal, dreamlike, melodic and wholly not-like-the-rest songs, “Ten Times” and “Ashley’s Haircut,” which were then sent round to band members for remote contributions.  As a result, there are two distinct types of songs on The Power of Rocks: the herky-jerky, dada-ist contraptions described in the first two paragraphs and a sort of luminous dream pop that might remind you of the Green Child.

“As soon as a chunk is bitten/you’ll see that real life’s/inside with the pips,” O’Bray confides in “Red Apple Happiness,” inviting us all behind the surfaces to the messy vitality within. The accompanying video (above) is even stranger than the song, with brightly colored blob people playing a board game and pointing rhythmically toward an apple.  And yet, it is all rather inviting, rather endearing, rather cheerful. You end up smiling, not knowing exactly why.