There’s no shortage of bands who make a substantial nod to the seminal works of William S. Burroughs: The Soft Machine (and offshoot project Matching Mole) take their name from Burroughs’ cut-up of the same title (the latter being a play on the French translation) and Steely Dan (named after a dildo that features in ‘Naked Lunch’) being but two of the more obvious and better known examples. Naked Lunch require little by way of an explanation in that sense. Despite having been aware of their existence as a keen observer of all things Burroughs-related, I hadn’t actually investigated their output, so had high hopes when their latest album landed in my review pile.
Disappointingly, the band’s bio, which spans 20 years of success and failure, is, in many ways, more interesting than this album. Far from echoing the wild experimentalism and warped satirical routines of what is widely regarded as one of the most challenging (anti) novels of the twentieth century, ‘All is Fever’ sounds more like The Arcade Fire on sedatives. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have some nice moments: the sweeping wall of sound of ‘The Sun’ has an epic 60s pop feel and there’s some nicely overloading layering going on over ‘Lonely Boy’.
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However, the dreamy, drippy folk stylings of ‘Shine On’ do little to impress, and the iffy pseudo-reggae vocal on ‘The Funeral’ simply doesn’t work, and undermines the sentiment of what would otherwise be a moving track.
It isn’t that ‘All is Fever’ isn’t doesn’t induce a hallucinogenic, paranoiac bewilderment that’s the problem, but there’s little doubt that it very much fails to fulfil the promise of its title: hazy and lazy but rarely crazy, it’s far too measured and calculated to work up a sweat, let alone get close to feverish.
Naked Lunch Online
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