Lunch are an especially interesting and an especially American band. Whereas Joy Division
and the early Factory Records roster provides the template for so many of the
newer dark postpunk acts, with Lunch there is a definite turn towards US bands
like the Gun Club and
the Wipers. None
of this is to say that the influences of British or other styles of postpunk
don’t weigh in here. There are strains of Red
Lorry Yellow Lorry and The Sound in
their sound, too.
A lot of newer postpunk revivalist bands try to achieve a
cold, distant, despondent European sound (the sounds of grey and rainy
Manchester, England circa 1979, perhaps) Lunch actually have a warm, even
subtly sexual, intonation to their songs. They’re still as gloomy and
introspective as the best of them, but Lunch do this in an interesting way that
at once pulls elements from bands like The Chameleons (“Script of the Bridge”),
The Sound (“From the Lion’s Mouth”), the Wipers, the Gun Club, and Red Lorry
Yellow Lorry (“Talk About the Weather”), with the American influences
especially at the fore. Not a bad set of comparisons at all, I would submit. In
more contemporary terms, the influence of the Spectres (“Last Days”), the
Estranged, Bellicose Minds (“The Spine”), and even Shadowhouse seem to figure
into the mix, although Shadowhouse vocalist Shane’s deep vox are more Glenn
Danzig-y than what Promoetheus Wolf has going on here.
