REVIEW: The Lunch Ladies – “Ladies First”
The Lunch Ladies, hailing from Boston, MA (and mostly comprised of grads from the Berklee College of Music), have released their long-awaited debut album with ten brand new songs for you to HATE (as they tell us)! This album is awesomely weird. All around peak composition, production, songwriting, sound choices, and humor in a manner that is digestible, masterfully made, and fun. Fun is absolutely the right way to describe this album. It wears a big bedazzled construction paper crown with “FUN” scribbled on it in crayon.
As the former rhythm (?) guitarist of this band, I’ve never had more fun playing music with a band in my life and still hunt for the high I had hearing and playing their music. I initially was filling in for them for one show as their guitarist at the time couldn’t make it, and when Devon texted me the link to Nose Picker, I loved it and told him it sounded like if Captain Underpants was a song, and that it’s ******* awesome. Both points hold strong for every song on this album. If you read Big Nate, Captain Underpants, or any of those absurd surreal reads growing up, this is a listen that will make you feel like you’re binging those books for the first time again.
Ladies First is hard to compare to any album I’ve ever heard, but the most fair comparison I can muster is to the works of Frank Zappa with flavors from alien cuisines I never knew could exist. Every single nibble of this album, down to one out of 44.1k audio samples, is a deliberate and carefully calibrated choice made over the years (decades even – Devon, the lead, once told me had been working on many of these songs since he learned to speak) of constructing this work. Every listen of this work gives you something new and absurd to appreciate that makes you say “wtf” – there’s always some layer, instrument, or texture you didn’t notice, and now that you hear it, you appreciate even further. I can only imagine what the Pro Tools projects look like in their basement studio post-production.
Ladies First is a little bit theater-like not in the “obnoxious break-into-song theater kid” manner but in a “vulgar improv comedy show” manner. It builds its own world with recurring characters and pokes fun at all of the made up human rules. Nose Picker tells you that it’s okay to pick your nose and even offers to help you do it. Yeah, Large Butt is narrated by a tinny-voiced chipmunk character whose butt is just too large for life. Who would ever think to make a Jelly and Cheese Sandwich? I had a few when we played together. Just try one, trust me.
Every song on this album has its one way of standing out and telling its own unique story…there are no two songs you can bunch together minus the obvious Oval Opal (the opener that warns you this album is all music to hate) and Opal Oval (the inspirational closer that tells you that the race has already started and it’s time to go!) It feels like the weirdest Madlib you could ever read…or listen to…which you should consider doing.
(Pulled from my review on 90.1 FM WRUV Burlington’s webpage)
