SONGS FROM A RHEUM

Lower Plenty

Hard Rubbish LP

Special Award Records/Easter Bilby 2012

If the Aussies have a Lawrence, Kansas, circa 1996 of their very own, that scrapper of a town is surely where such a lumbering squad as Lower Plenty 1^st found purchase. A collaborative release between Special Award Records and Easter Bilby (giving chase to their solid distro quick-snap), Hard Rubbish takes me away to a strange teenage street, where feared abandominiums get snuck-through in the middle of a Thursday night; where somebody steals a copy of F.J. McMahon’s Spirit of the Golden Juice from their friend’s uncle at a party and plays it through a Sears portable on the front lawn and nobody laughs at it; where cigarettes are passed between friends on aimless car rides. Youth, after all, is kinda meant to be wasted, and these Lower Plenty kids seem to be wasting it good & proper. Though I ain’t quite sold on the whole affair, they’s certainly takin the pimply post-Midwest indie thing to dreamier, groggier places than I’m used to hearin’. “Nullarbor,” which I’m assumin’ is the single or some approximation thereof, nails a 3-beer afternoon to the attic floor like it oughta and it’s definitely serviceable at 2am on a long ride home, too--sorta like Galaxie 500 without the collegiate wank to the third power. The stinkweed of factory towns is perhaps more fragrant on cuts like “Strange Beast,” and the dream-speak opener “Work in the Morning,” though, and that's where the real fear/fun dichotomy rides like thunder.

Can’t complain too much, since what we get to witness here is the growing pains of a promising lil charmer of a band. And just think: I coulda written about the new Fushitsusha. Coulda but dinna. Glad.