Released: October 16, 2015
tracklist:
01. Low Hanging Fruit
02. Bleach
03. Auction
04. Rub Your Eyes
05. You Only Have
06. Check
07. Circus
08. Hyperware
09. Grey Tiles
10. Shed Weight
Lushes
Service Industry | FLT-024
Brooklyn based duo Lushes have thought about it and Lushes are confused too. Don’t you worry. They’re not looking for an answer. They have an album for you, though – Service Industry.
The album is a rollercoaster through the maze of modern living. It was recorded and mixed by Sonic Youth’s long time engineer Aaron Mullan at Echo Canyon, during a period of intense money, work and life stress.
The sound also came out of the tension between the duo – with singer/guitarist James Ardery having grown up listening to punk and rap, and drummer Joel Myers raised on classical music. But the tension comes into balance with every song, ejecting the band’s music from the cultural hype machine out onto our daily lives.
Opener “Low Hanging Fruit” captures the feeling of hypnotic desire for empty instant gratification, with its angular guitar riffs and softly menacing bass line. “Rub Your Eyes” is an atmospheric and gorgeous meditation on breaking routine, finding peace and determination in finally answering hard life questions you’ve been avoiding for years. “Circus,” featuring a hysterical saxophone solo by Zs front man Sam Hillmer, is a tongue in cheek commentary on emotional labor, on pretending to be happy while serving a farce – catering, corporate events, whatever. And album closer “Shed Weight” harks back to Lushes’ instinct to shift moods on a dime, with a lush, almost tender chorus swelling at the last minute to a brutal cacophony of industrial feedback, before ejecting the listener back into the world.
Service Industry extends the tensions begun with Lushes’ debut album, What Am I Doing. In their first album, the themes of anxiety were often held back in pursuit of serene moments, brief escapes from our mundane lives. With Service Industry, Lushes give you something more raw, more guitar-and-drum driven, more primal.
The album throws a wrench in things. It stands as a map of a crisis, a bleak and gorgeous snapshot of our world, and a question: why continue living like we do?