WONDERLICK, Wonderlick Goes to War

With the release of Wonderlick Goes to War, their crafty and cool, insanely infectious, incisively sociopolitical musical commentary on human nature, Jay Blumenfeld and Tim Quirk - who began their epic collaboration in 1982 - mark an incredible quarter century since they began recording free music for the Susquehanna Hat Company website, which they set up to sell merch for their longtime pop-punk band Too Much Joy.

It’s been a topsy turvy journey since then, marked with critical acclaim, house concerts, sporadic recording, two resurrections of Too Much Joy, music featured on MTV’s Sex in the ‘90s and in the HBO doc Small Town Ecstacy! – and oh yeah, early gigs featuring legendary magician Penn Jillette on bass! All of which now leads to their current outburst against encroaching fascism, achieved in many facets with crunchy distorted electric guitars, dreamy keyboards, filtered vocals, catchy hooks, hypnotic grooves and songs whose titles are as soul-stirring and thought-provoking as their narratives.

These range from “Vinko Bogotaj,” (a fuzzy rocker about a crash-prone ski jumper featured on ABC’s Wide World of Sports to represent the agony of defeat; a haunting, real life series of cautionary tales about “Popping Pills” and “I Am a Children’s Book,” a slow building, eventually incendiary raging lament told from the perspective of a work nobody cares about which is actually a veiled dig at reactionaries trying to keep so called “dangerous ideas” away from kids.

While the punchy, punkish opening track “Niagara Falls, 1969” uses extreme repetition and bouncy keys to convey an example of shining human achievement, a band whose label is called People Still Suck music is bound to deliver intensely on the reality of dehumanization and cruelty in our country and the world at large. The duo achieves this dramatically on the one-two punch of the anthemic “Rhinoceros” and the poignant ballad “Museum of the Inquisition,” connecting a metaphor about the way fascism converts previously reasonable people into true believers and the dark results and potential devastation of such systems as told through Tim’s reflections on a visit to the museum in Granada Spain showcasing long ago atrocities which are always a stone’s throw away from repeating themselves. Perhaps the most telling lyric in this mini-opus is “So don’t seem so surprised/Manking is so inventive he tells such lovely lies.” Damn.

Balancing all this thematic heaviness is the pure retro-poppy synthy joy of “Wag Your Tails,” which provide relief via its fun fluffy hook: “So wag your tails, shake your butts! Let’s just go f***ing nuts!”  Helping bring literal elevated pulsating to Wonderlick Goes to War is producer Dave Trumfio, a member of 90s indie new wavers The Pulsars and post-punk band The Mekons whose production credits include Wilco and Built to Spill.