Hot Lunch
Hot Lunch

Personally, I am rather annoyed by the frantic quest for low-fi at all costs. You know what I mean, right? Thousands of bands trying to recreate an aura of authentic mysticism in their albums, hoping that some haphazardly recorded feedback here and there will somehow make them relevant, or at least more authentic than the crap MTV airs. Well, there's nothing to criticize about the authenticity of these Hot Lunch, garage and punk directed at the gut are the incorruptible foundations of good music – not that the rest is crap, I mean, even Steve Reich does it for me a lot, but I definitely prefer to see guitars breaking after two minutes of a show rather than endure two hours of pseudo-intellectual discussions at the end of a brainy concert, sitting uncomfortably in the audience.

So yes, ok, it's authentic crap, but is there art too? I mean, where's the Great Rock Music behind all this, where's that fucking banal and often degrading reality rediscovered from a new perspective (you know, Pere Ubu, Richard Hell, Velvet Underground, Nick Cave, but also Mule, Cracker, Soft Boys just to not always mention the usual ones)? Here I am today presenting you yet another authentic album with nothing to say. Hey, no hard feelings though. Since low-fi no longer pulls much tail like it did a few months ago, Hot Lunch is diving into shit-fi (it's written in the tags on their Bandcamp page, what can I say?). How does shit-fi sound? Well, I'd say worse than “Horn the Unicorn” by Ty Segall but better than any album by Daniel Johnston. Clearly, Hot Lunch has no pretensions (which is always fine, I even suggest: there is no band with huge artistic pretensions that doesn't absolutely, objectively, and indisputably suck), nice riffs blasted at the right volume, all material in line with the excellent contemporary Californian production, shame that genius is missing. Or it hasn’t manifested yet. The guys hail from the flourishing state of Pennsylvania, a state that gave us the hideous Utopia (the filth of rock par excellence) and Will Smith, and now this fun but copycat band of ten thousand others. The cover of Lovely One, by the good Ty Segall (nice track by the way, released in 2009 in the decent “Lemons”, although I definitely prefer the rawer version contained in the compilation “Singles 2007-2010”), already says a lot about the roots of Hot Lunch and the ever-growing importance of the Californian scene, but what do they add of their own?

A few more than listenable tracks like Do You Want to Give $$, Ass, Brainfry, but essentially nothing that hasn't been heard a billion times before. Just like Jeffrey Novak and Mikal Cronin, even Hot Lunch have realized that there is no need to go in a more “elevated” direction, the one assiduously followed by Thee Oh Sees by John Dwyer since 2007 just to be clear, but even pandering to the pseudo-underground market can be a not too disagreeable idea (and in Cronin's specific case trying to make ends meet by whoring himself with the shameful pop-rock of the last album), in short: why not have fun and maybe make a bit of money? Nothing immoral or disgusting, to be clear, I am absolutely certain that the greatest punk and rock albums are born out of madness, lust, and generally a good mix of ignorance, drugs, and ambition. In the end, between Novak and Cronin, I assure you that the debut album by these Hot Lunch is something much more valuable, a purchase that will entertain you for a few hours if you love the genre. Ah, do not confuse this band with the namesake formation from San Francisco, the rising star of the label Who can you trust?, which also includes the recent work of the magnificent Zig Zags and the very Italian In Zaire.

These Hot Lunch are much more hard and glam rock, but so far equally banal.