The Lavender Flu, Tomorrow CleanersĀ (MEDS, 2020)
Thereās a famous YouTube clip of a Butthole Surfers interview where the band is sitting in a bed, mostly shirtless, with a duvet over their legs covered in cartons of pizza and packs of cigarettes. Theyāre all clearly on acid, and they start losing themselves in the sound of their voices, repeating letters (P⦠C⦠P⦠L⦠S⦠Dā¦) and making sounds until they erupt in an old sea shanty before the speechless interviewer. Yeah, weāre still reviewing the latest album by the Lavender Flu, I just wanted to put that image in your head.
Imagine taking a bunch of 60s psychedelic rock records and leaving them out in the sun for a few days, then covering them with shroom-laced honey, lighting up a giant blunt and trying to play them, you might get close to what āTomorrow Cleaners' sounds like. But hyperbole aside, Iām really glad Chris Gunn and his crew (on this record itās mostly Gunn, anyway) went back recording blown-out weirdo bedroom psych after two more conventional releases like Mow The GlassĀ and Barbarian Dustāwhich, donāt get me wrong, were great in their own right.
The mood is nocturnal and esoteric: Gunn sounds half-asleep, lost in wordplay about life, death, bugs and feelings, trying to will visions into reality, while guitars, drums, synths and programmed drums swirl around, sometimes catching a song and then falling off after a few bars. The most solid element of this wobbly but intriguing mess is the bass, played by either Gunn himself or Scott Simmons, always very present in the mix and rounded, deep, almost reminiscent of dub music.
There is a darkness in the music: they aināt no hippies. If you want to have a good time with the Flu, youād better take what theyāre taking and hope you land on the same wavelength, where death and sticky surfaces and strange smells are funny signifiers for a whole ānother world. Oh, and I donāt know where to put this observation, so Iāll just leave it here: if youāre thinking āthis sounds like somethingā when the 2nd song on side B starts, itās āWinterā by The Fall. I went crazy for a little bit until I realized that. Youāre welcome.
Click here to listen to Tomorrow CleanersĀ on Bandcamp.
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