by Anika Maculangan
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282’s The Funeral Pudding is an album that much reads like a diary, a byproduct to San Francisco’s sprawling art scene in the late 80s and mid 90s. A composite tapestry of clunking drum beats, shuddering mandolins, and tinkering banjos, the band exudes buzzing, droned-out showers of spontaneity, demonstrating their affinity for improvisation and experimentation. The lyricism of the album evokes the same manner of sporadic behavior, conveying loose musings and ponderings of the mind, into a concoction of contemplative reckoning.
These introspections, which are decadent abstractions of the soul, express the constant quarrel that festers between the mind and heart. For instance, on the opening track “Waited Too Long,” Anne Eickelberg sings to describe the transitory essence of time, and how in its progression, there’s the inevitable difficulty of keeping up. Accompanied by jolty stripes of guitar, brassy thumping, and overdrive-leaden mauling, the album’s musicality makes up a light bulb that glints slightly, enough to signal to us that the house is well and alive.
A hefty portion of the album features instrumentation that surprises the listener with cut-throat twangs of the violin and snappish twitching of the bass. The tracks that do have vocals, courtesy of Eickelberg, Mark Davies, Hugh Swarts, and more, are melodies suffused with somnolent, turbid modulations of resonance. One of Matador’s many crowning glories, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 had its humble beginnings from the locale of Iowa, which in their accents of sound, are most evident. There’s something about the band, and particularly in this album, that feels exploratory, like we are looking upon a vast field, foraging for clarity.
Within the album’s earthy, mellow disposition, one can find a friend amongst the band’s tender temperament, which almost certainly, greets you like a warm hug upon tuning in. With the tracks’ warping distortions of sound, sometimes snarky and cheeky, the band places emphasis on the exchange that is bounced off from one area of sound to another, manifesting hammering waves of reverb-cladded frequency. In their artistry we recognize their prowess at picking up entities of sound that one wouldn’t expect to mesh well together, however manages to perfectly compliment the other through finding the right puzzle piece to fit into.
In the multiple crevices that their musicality entertains, one can discover a nook of timbres that stress the importance of versatility and variety in sound. But above all, is the homemade, DIY feel of which the album is able to encapsulate within its margins, through their casual, carefree, and laid-back demeanor that doesn’t bank on too much pretentiousness. We encounter such tracks like “Heavy Head” and are introduced to museums of nostalgia and sentimentality, as the song dwells on what weight one may feel at one’s shoulders upon contending with the inclinations and tendencies that come with being human. On The Funeral Pudding, the band sets an atmosphere that builds upon its determination to profess catchy, funky, and dynamically monophonic intonation while imparting meaning that spells out vulnerability to its listeners.
Through the motifs that are seasoned throughout this album, one can successfully grasp the band’s propensity toward the artistically ripened avant-garde. While the tracks may have a few scratches here and there, it’s all intentional under the cherry on top, whether it be a shrill accordion or the grumbling textures that christen the audio with something that feels like a kind of secret message. With a dedicated cult-following, amongst their own niche circles, listeners of the band understand their motive when they look in the mirror and wave to the fellow that lives upon the other side of the glass.