Back in 2017, we wrote about Useless by London noise rock quartet Brunch, describing it as “an album strung up between the opposing poles of mania and catatonia.” Consisting of Sean Brook (vox, guitar), Bobby MacPherson (drums), Adrian McCusker-Delicado (guitar) and Tom Rundell (bass), the band make an energetic and unpredictable style of indie rock that marries a slacker aesthetic with tumultuous noise, and ties it all together with a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek tone. “The result,” we wrote of Useless, “is a noisy and volatile album that’s exciting and rough, like an unfamiliar acquaintance you could never quite trust but hang around all the same, hoping some of the reckless energy might rub off.”
Brunch are back with a brand new full-length record, The Golden Age, and we’re lucky enough to be able to share a stream before the November 15th release. Recorded across two sessions with Seb Gilmore of Public Pool Recordings, the album develops the Brunch style further, pushing the limits of rock in as many directions as humanly possible. “Delicate indie-rock songs explode into hard-edged rockers,” the band describe. “Big, bloated rock monsters rub shoulders with rapid-fire rock workouts. The genre is ROCK.”
Opener ‘Get It’ sets the tone, wistful guitar emerging from an ambient fog before the rest of the instruments crash into the scene too, blowing away the cobwebs with sheer noise and weight. However, this being Brunch, the song is no simple rise from quiet to loud, nor an straightforward ebb and flow between the two. Rather, the song maintains an erratic air, its spirit cycling from reflection to confusion to joy and back, as well as a kind of unhinged release too.
Just as the sound remains impossible to pin down, so too does the lyrical tone, setting ironic playfulness next to naked emotion and leaving it to the listener to untangle the ultimate meaning. “I’m uncomfortable,” begins the song of the same name in a prime example, “and I don’t know why. Is it indigestion? Or cos my mother died?” The moment is not dwelt upon as some cheap punch, rather just one line among many from a decidedly twenty-first century perspective, so overwhelmed with information that even the most immediate sensations are second guessed
‘Life Story’ is another good example, a dissatisfied track about the flow of time laughing at your ideas of success and happiness, those dreams you used to imagine were achievable targets. The lyrics certainly dive into some amusing self-deprecation, but this narrative is muddied by a wider anger too, a cynicism pointed outwards, as though in the end it is perhaps not some individual failing to feel discontented but rather the cultural logic of our time.
“Although I hate everything I’ve done
I will keep on trying out
That’s got to be worth something
in this economy.I took a course on how to monetise my dreams
invest my savings, diversified my streams.
But now I’m thirty-three
now I’m forty-three
now I’m fifty-three
now I’m ninety-three
The discrepancy between between the future previously imagined and the future that has arrived is the one constant on The Golden Age. Indeed, the title speaks to the sentiment, evoking a period of prosperity and happiness that can only truly exist as some imminent ideal certain to arrive at any moment. If the nineties told us that we could be whatever we wanted to be, then the contemporary moment is the dawning reality of the lie, the realisation that the entire system hinges upon a perpetually deferred gratification—there’s always another product to buy, car to drive, course to take, and satisfaction remains just outside of arm’s length, a mirage on the horizon that will get closer, surely, any day now.
The problem, of course, is that during all this waiting, time’s doing its thing. Starting as downer dream pop before seguing into a sloppy classic punk rock sound, ’30 Year Old Man’ takes this head on, staring into the chasm between what life could be and what it actually is. Trying to plug the void with get-quick-rich schemes and massive motors and supermarket clothes, only for the space to keep sucking everything into its maw. You start to wonder, what if this whole thing has been some kind of scam?
The song is immediately followed by ‘300 Year Old Man’, a track with its body torn away to leave a cold and naked skeleton, gnashing its teeth in the dark. “I didn’t want to get old,” it sings, “but there ain’t nothing I can do about it.” But there is something that can breathe life into this old boy yet, the sound rising into a furious rattle as it lists the company cars and coffee machines and huge guitars that failed to add up to an answer. The realisation might be its own golden age, one arriving too late and in no way the shade you imagined but arriving nonetheless. Because this whole thing has been lie, so what are we going to do about it now?
