Undisciplined is the fourth album by Too Much Joy side hustle Wonderlick that pairs Jay Blumenfield and Tim Quirk and allows them to spend time together at Rollercoaster recordings studio in Burbank, that is run by The Mighty Lemon Drops very own David Newtons, where they worked on the principal that you can't say no if someone has an idea, you have to run with it, a principal I may employ while interpreting what the songs may be about.
The album opens with Self Portrait With Bottle Of Wine that has a good chugging rhythm, to chug that wine down, as you create your masterpiece, noting all your imperfections and then revelling in them, as you wonder about the early doctrines of the church and how they might affect your art.
Let Id Out sounds like a sweet indie rock power pop song as they plead to let Id Out, as nothing should be taboo, which I would agree too, as long as it's all consensual between adults, so let's all do what we wanna do.
Want To Want To starts like it wants to be a lighters in the air anthem, while talking about drowning from the inside out, so it has a rueful edge to it, as we all sway along to it.
Otis Redding Disco Album has a pumping dancefloor feel, with wry questioning as to how good Otis disco album is, this brings up images in my head of Lake Pomona, sitting on the shore working out exactly where Otis plane went down, close to the ancient burial mounds, as the trumpets help lift them up to find a higher plain.
Rotten has all sorts of regrets for really screwing things up in ways that you can't ever repair, while sounding like a classic Too Much Joy song.
Sob (Forever) is slow thoughtfully strummed anthem hoping things can go back to how they were, before you were left Sobbing for ever more, perhaps if they hadn't been total sons of Bitches, it would have never happened, but that’s not the world Wonderlick live in.
Muppet Legs has them wondering what it would be like if they had Miss Piggy or Kermit's legs, would they be better people or not, as they seemed to have persuaded Animal to rein it in on drums.
Lithuanian Ambulance Ride has a good electronic beat, as this tale of getting sick in the mother land gets going, it makes me remember how stunned I was on finding the ancestral burial grounds in Ukmerge, realising they had been bulldozed and turned into a school playing field by the soviets, I almost needed an ambulance to get over the shock, this is a different kind of illness to that, one they are happy to have survived as they approach a hospital in Vilnius hoping to survive a near miss with the grim reaper.
Well Equipped is their own private movie, as they morph into Dolph Lundgren and Sly Stallone to be the most Well Equipped Indie rock gods imaginable, the biggest hunks to ever pull on an anorak and rock out.
Begin Again has them rolling a big rock up a hill backwards again and again, as if they have Occams razor on the brain again.
Realizing they are stuck in a loop of calamitous proportions once again they just want to press re-wind and Begin Again.
Thunderstorms And Fireflies opens like it wants to be a sappy Carpenters style pop song, about moving to Noo Joisey and not fitting in, till you find the Thunderstorms And Fireflies moving you beyond belief, as you acclimatize.
The album closes with Letting Spiders Live about getting old enough to realize that Spiders aren’t the enemy, as they eat the enemy, the really annoying bugs and flies, they almost sound mature on this tune, allowing some strings to caress the edge of the web they weave.
Find out more at https://wonderlick1.bandcamp.com/album/undisciplined https://www.facebook.com/Wonderlick http://www.wonderlick.com/
