Buffet Lunch comes honking and shambling into view, its music a discombobulated concoction of wandering guitars, wheezy keyboards and yelped surrealities. “Perfect Hit!,” which opens, shouts in unison against enveloping entropy, emphatic but nonsensical and full of giddy joy. It’s not so far off from what I heard in 2021 on their debut The Power of Rocks, when I wrote, ““Buffet Lunch has mastered the art of cheery, chaotic insanity, threading nonsense words into ebullient spoke-sung verses while clever saxophone blurts and wheedling keyboards wreath their melodies in happy abandon.”
The band, out of Glasgow, is a foursome, formed around the jittery energies of singer and rhythm guitarist Perry O’Bray. To this, we add the angular extrapolations of Matthew Lord on lead guitar, the bumptious optimism of Jack Shearer’s bass play and the bashing steadiness of drummer Luke Moran. Someone, though it’s not clear who, plays a bit of organ, weaving carnival bleats and bloops into “Merchandise,” a song that doesn’t so much undulate as wobble like jell-o, climbing up and down the scale notes.
This band can rock pretty hard when it gets a notion, as in the fierce guitar-slashing opening to “Another Face Entirely,” though this resolute opening gives way to more loopy, looping TVP style arabesques. “What’s he burning?” inquires O’Bray, with increasing agitation, the musical wallops and wanders and occasionally erupts in fire behind him. The one I like the best, though, is “Blip” with its tipsy bass line, punctuated by a congratulatory cowbell ping. Punk in execution, with its ragged group vocals and discordant blurts of sax, the song nonetheless slants towards the music hall. It reminds me of another funny, fuzzy band that takes the piss, the Welsh outfit The Bug Club.
Thinking of the Bug Club, the question arises: how many jaggedly lackadaisical, loosely organized but fizzily fun bands do you need? Two? Five? Unlimited? Maybe make room for at least one more in Buffet Lunch.
Here at Birthday Cake For Breakfast, we like to get to the heart of what an artist is all about. We feel that what influences them is just as important as the music they make. With that in mind, ahead of releasing their latest album ‘Perfect Hit!‘ (via Upset The Rhythm), Scotland / Newcastle based four-piece Buffet Lunch talk us through a number of influences. Take it away, Buffet Lunch…
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Buffet Lunch — The Power of Rocks (Upset the Rhythm)
Buffet Lunch has mastered the art of cheery, chaotic insanity, threading nonsense words into ebullient spoke-sung verses while clever saxophone blurts and wheedling keyboards wreath their melodies in happy abandon. Behind this smiling, showman-like façade, the whole endeavor frays and tears at itself, guitar lines jittering off at angles to one another, as a bass bobs up to be heard. The interplay of instruments is both precise and full of entropy, as if, at any moment, the whole Rube Goldberg contraption could fall in on itself in pings and rattles and small explosions.
Consider, for instance, “Red Apple Happiness,” which dances clumsily to rooty-tooting saxophone and sticks on rims, shifting its weight ponderously from foot to foot like a bear that has recently learned to cake walk. The vocals are a precisely timed shout, unvarying in pitch but flexible enough in emphasis. The singer (so to speak) Perry O’Bray ties up each phrase in a neat bow of rhyming, as the song honks and chortles and winks at us. Yet even so, there are hints of trouble in one guitar rattling away its anxieties and a zig-zagging sax line that can’t seem to find its bearings. And yet, what could be more charming than a cheerful song tipped on its side, all efforts to please intact but coming from such a very odd angle?
Buffet Lunch is a Scottish four-piece, made up of O’Bray plus Neil Robinson on bass, John Muir on guitar and Luke Moran on drums. With a couple of EPs and a string of live shows under their collective belts, the band set out to record in the rural north of Scotland in March 2020 and made much of this album in isolation while the rest of the world careened into pandemic and lockdown. They were mostly done when they went home to the lockdown, but O’Bray recorded two ringers afterwards with Jayne Dent, the ethereal, dreamlike, melodic and wholly not-like-the-rest songs, “Ten Times” and “Ashley’s Haircut,” which were then sent round to band members for remote contributions. As a result, there are two distinct types of songs on The Power of Rocks: the herky-jerky, dada-ist contraptions described in the first two paragraphs and a sort of luminous dream pop that might remind you of the Green Child.
“As soon as a chunk is bitten/you’ll see that real life’s/inside with the pips,” O’Bray confides in “Red Apple Happiness,” inviting us all behind the surfaces to the messy vitality within. The accompanying video (above) is even stranger than the song, with brightly colored blob people playing a board game and pointing rhythmically toward an apple. And yet, it is all rather inviting, rather endearing, rather cheerful. You end up smiling, not knowing exactly why.
Chris Hopkins, who runs London label Permanent Slump has made great connections outside of London. One of his bands, The Bin Bags, has played with Al McKay (Australia’s Dick Diver). Buffet Lunch (Edinburgh, Scotland) represents another reach outside of London. And, while Permanent Slump’s Buffet Lunch cassette is sold out, there is a full LP soon to be available.
Upset the Rhythm will be releasing “The Power of Rocks” in early May. Buffet Lunch sound like an amazing cross between Australian dolewave, The Fall, Camper van Beethoven and Parquet Courts.
