NEWSLETTER

by andrew earles
photo by alex behr



I’m going to wager that a widely understood chronological line of demarcation is drawn in the Matador Records catalog, denoting an “After” good-times vibe and a “Before Slanted and Enchanted” soul-sucking vortex of financial terror. It seems strange to think that records were released by Matador prior to the label’s hitting pay dirt with Pavement’s first proper full-length, but release them they did, and there is one that makes Slanted and Enchanted, and especially this year’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, sound like John Cafferty and the fucking Beaver Brown Band.

That record is titled Lovelyville (1991), and it’s the work of five strong personalities calling themselves Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Perhaps you’ve heard the name mentioned in hushed tones. Truthfully, I had not heard Lovelyville until a year after its release, when the next TFUL282 record, 1992’s epic double album Mother of All Saints, came out. It had the sort of “moment-of-clarity” impact on me that most people associate with better-known (read: overrated) albums such as Loveless, Daydream Nation, You’re Living All Over Me, and, if your expiration date passed some time ago, Entertainment! or, for chrissakes, the Ramones’ debut.

Mother of All Saints placed TFUL282 at the forefront of the very loose and so-far-nameless microgenre (even more specific than “lo-fi”) identifiable by totally out-to-lunch interpretations of indie pop. Thinking Fellers, along with Trumans Water, Fly Ashtray, Wingtip Sloat, Uncle Wiggly, Furtips, Supreme Dicks, and Strapping Fieldhands, have found new and hair-raising ways to apply pop hooks to all manner of unexplored dissonance, volume, and rhythm. They are occasionally joined by Sebadoh and Guided by Voices, provided each is in a frisky and noisy mood. Mother of All Saints was the first “difficult” music to invade my brain in an exhilarating, face-flushing, tell-everyone-I-know manner. Free jazz and noise were failing the test (but not for lack of trying, or monetary expenditures, on my part), but Mother of All Saints was cause for inspiration, optimism, and a search for anything that sounded remotely like it.

Hailing from San Francisco (via Iowa for a few of them), the five members of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282—Mark Davies, Anne Eickelberg, Brian Hageman, Jay Paget, and Hugh Swarts—are now riding the wake of masterpiece No. 2: the relatively accessible Strangers From the Universe (released this year by Matador). The album actually has songs that anyone’s mom could handle. “The Piston and the Shaft” is lounge pop turned inside out, “My Pal Tortoise” is one of the catchiest things they’ve done, and the same goes for “Cup of Dreams.” There’s decidedly less of the band’s purposeful filler (they call it “Feller-Filler”—cute!) and one run-around-outside-telling-complete-strangers-about-it epic masterpiece of alternately blown-out and soaring noise pop called “Four Hundred Years” that, well, must be experienced for you to understand.

Without paying a consulting fee to a musical historian/archivist, one would be hard-pressed to pinpoint any outside influences in the Thinking Fellers’ music. And that brings me to my first-ever trip across several southern state lines in order to see TFUL282 perform to a thin, underappreciative crowd. At the unfortunately named Howlin’ Wolf in New Orleans, I stood in front of two guys in their mid-30s (the evening would have been ruined if these two stood in front of me) who kept stating a different band for each song or song section, as in, “That part right there sounds like the Residents” or “This one’s always reminded me of Beefheart.” Then they’d nod knowingly to each other as the song continued. Not being familiar with either band, and lacking the 700 pounds and 75 or 80 years they shared between the two of them, I was not in a position to care about the musical opinions of two hunched-over vagina repellants. I was too busy having my ass kicked by the greatness of the Thinking Fellers live. I’ve since seen the band several times in the past year; most recently, my efforts won me the honor of not so much choosing an encore’s content as influencing it (I think I got one of about 30 suggested songs in). But back to the business at hand…

The clichés must be pulled out and dusted off to properly illustrate TFUL282 in a live setting. The band uses a couple of tricks to reach a transcendent performing mode. The first is dynamics. Certain songs in the band’s repertoire are not only built for a live setting but essentially designed to be set openers. “Undertaker” (from the pre-Strangers teaser EP Admonishing the Bishops) is one of those songs, as are “Catcher” (from MoAS) and, come to think of it, about two-thirds of the band’s songbook. Those familiar with the band’s output know how inconsistent the fidelity can be from song to song. A great Thinking Fellers set is the experimental-rock version of the listening room at a home-audio emporium. The set alternates between the clarity of Steely Dan, the discordant punch of the best Sonic Youth, and the effortless beauty of the Feelies or of Wire’s 154.

Second, we have the skill. This is an experimental band with the ability to be abrasive, unstructured, and paint-peeling if the desire strikes. The intangible backbone supporting all this is that TFUL282 plays left-field noise pop with the interband communication of a jazz combo or, at the very least, a prog-rock band. That TFUL282 can pull this off and remain the antithesis of Phish, Béla Fleck, and Medeski Martin & Wood is a no-brainer. TFUL282 fans having record-collection crossover with quasi-jazzbo neo-hippies? Oil and water. The real accomplishment isn’t Thinking Fellers’ avoidance of fare friendly to the average chin-stroker, it’s the perfection of eclecticism without a hint of the obnoxious baggage associated with those wacky torchbearers of clever music for stupid people: Zappa, Mr. Bungle, and Primus.

Unlike 99 percent of touring “indie-rock” bands, these five people talk to one another through playing to a degree that is just as important as how they talk to one another in the van. TFUL282 become a smooth marriage of tight playing in accordance with the style of pop they themselves invented and the unobtrusive inclusion of improvisation. Two sort of similar bands, Sun City Girls and the Dead C, mesh rock/pop-based song structure and free-improv caterwaul for a variety of outcomes. The difference is that TFUL282 ooze charisma and heart quite unlike the two previously mentioned examples and, to be accurate, quite unlike any other band currently in existence.

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Comments

Anonymous, on Oct 17, 2009 wrote: if it wasn’t after the letters, than by now we should know this is a fact ’94 issue.
	captain cheesepuff, on Oct 13, 2009 wrote: next to right is kind of scaring me, truthfully.
	alligator123, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote: i love these freak-faces
Anonymous, on Oct 10, 2009 wrote: wow, this article is actually about music rather than a contrived one sentence description and a sarcastic interview.
Anonymous, on Oct 9, 2009 wrote: www.tful282.com
Anonymous, on Oct 9, 2009 wrote: sun city girls!
Anonymous, on Oct 9, 2009 wrote: i’m not embarrassed to say i’ve seen phish, bela fleck, and mmw live. mmw are incredibly talented. of course, the same could be said for the other two as well but i won’t go there.
	hi fructose, on Oct 9, 2009 wrote: here’s to matador for still releasing kickass records in 2009.
Anonymous, on Oct 8, 2009 wrote: ha ha. jaded as fuck in ’94. I hope this is a lark, but the sentiment and sophomoric nothing is cool writing is too geniune.
Anonymous, on Oct 8, 2009 wrote: is that a jab at zappa? why i outta...
Anonymous, on Oct 8, 2009 wrote: how dare you bash my beloved pavement! "gold soundz" is my new jam!