Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Strangers From The Universe (Album Review)

 

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Strangers From The Universe (1994)

My copy: 1994 press by Matador

The Fellers had come a long way. Often overlooked and underrated by typical rock historian accounts, the Thinking Fellers have cred going back to their first cassette (Wormed By Leonard) released in 1988. A radiating commitment to an original and manic sort of circus-rock kept the California band steady as they grew with the cross-country Matador records into increasingly refined musical clothing. What makes Strangers so widely appealing as an entrance into the imposing catalog of the Thinking Fellers is probably its supreme balance of musical influences and its subtle-enough maturation into a more introspective world.

  Where Mother Of All Saints was a whirlwind force of Butthole Surfers chaos imbued with the feverish, rural working class influences of the Meat Puppets, Strangers now found the band embracing softer gestures of love and longing (perhaps in a similar philosophical vein to the kind-hearted “love rock” sentiments popularized by Beat Happening). Tying everything together is the production, which on this record is the highpoint of the band’s career; the early albums being lo-fi out of necessity (for better or worse) and later records chasing the lo-fi trend that was becoming popular then (also for better or worse). Strangers tows the line perfectly between the grassroots sound of their earlier offerings and a sonic clarity that they had only scraped with on their most recent EPs, displaying obvious synergy with longtime producer Greg Freeman. 

Just from the track list it’s obvious they’ve trimmed down their signature “feller filler” and opted for a more distilled experience in the form of 8 (9 if you count the wistful soundscape “Guillotine”) core pieces that see lyric duty split fairly evenly between Brian Hageman and Mark Davies, with Hugh Swarts contributing to the herky-jerky “February” and the oozing shuffle “Socket.” 

Mark Davies weaves together the lighter, melodic songs: gentle floating guitar flirts with tension and explosive release on “Hundred of Years” while “Cup of Dreams” presents a powerhouse of American indie dream-pop, displaying an almost wholly sweet side of the Fellers and proving their writing prowess. Davies also pens the words to their most vulnerable work, the withering ballad “Noble Experiment” that leads the listener, through quaint piano and Ann Eickleberg’s disassociated sighs, acceptingly into Earth’s ultimate reclamation of her land from man.

Co-written between Davies and Hageman is the saucy, sex-allusion drenched “Piston And The Shaft” which displays a balance between their styles. Hageman jump starts the album with the frantic optimism of “My Pal The Tortoise,” a stark contrast to the hellish fury of the prior album’s “Gentlemen’s Lament.” Hageman is also responsible for the unrivaled masterpiece of the record: the jittery Beefheart discharge of “The Operation,” which pits a haunting, industrial twang against addictive, falsetto sing-song choruses.

If Tangle and Mother Of All Saints are the overexcited displays of some ambiguously threatening band of carnies, Strangers From The Universe carefully peels back a layer of derangement, exposing an emotional human face underneath the circus paint. Strangers retains an edge, but also exudes an elevated sense of beauty and sincerity. What sets the Fellers apart is that they have always felt sincere and bravely nerdy, but Strangers introduces a complexity that is the audio equivalent of matching the piercing gaze of a softly grinning stranger on the bus; whom is in possession of some mystifying wisdom that he quickly undercuts with a perverse joke.