Vundabar
Surgery and Pleasure
LOMA VISTA
Three years after their last full-length release, Vundabar return with their sixth album and first for Loma Vista, Surgery and Pleasure, a plaintive record exploring themes of identity within the modern world. Musically, the project adds some complexity to the Boston band’s signature jangle thump with darker, rougher textures. It does have some sonic restraint, however, which gives us a breather from all the garage-rock noise, but tracks can abruptly break against each other and pop the punk-infused bubble that Vundabar has been working within since their beginning.
In turns recalling the sounds of MGMT, DIIV, and PUP, Surgery and Pleasure is an album you can’t really predict. It spirals through themes of disillusionment and discernment, and the instrumentation rattles forward without a destination in mind—one minute you’re steamrolling by Drew McDonald’s stratified drums, and the next you’re entranced by frontman Brandon Hagen’s dream-like serenade. It’s a battle in itself, but this conflict is sorted without assigning any credit, flagged by the final track “Why Is It So Hard to Say Goodbye?”
There’s a jagged tenderness throughout the entire record, where sharp songs like “Let Me Bleed” and “Stallion Running” drown out the vulnerability of “Feels Like Forever” and “I Need You.” It’s as if we’re thrown back and forth between the rock and the hard place, pleading and avoiding acceptance in some attempt to settle the opposing currents that identity renders as imperfection. This record highlights a yearning that’s existential and wretched, finding catharsis in a few broken, cracked reflections, which ripple haphazardly—much like the album itself.
But I wanted more from Vundabar. It’s a little exhausting to hear the titles of “Hurricane” or “Easy Does It” being crooned over and over while feeling like the band can’t regain control of the turbulence. And yet, I’ll admit that I still admire the shaky lyricism, melodic overflow, and pattern repetition, as this is what’s become so familiar about Vundabar. They make it easy to insert yourself into the song, even if it means you can sing along to all of the lyrics after learning the first chorus. I just wish those lyrics matched their musical maturity level.
Approachable and infectious, Surgery and Pleasure viciously pushes back as much as it propels forward. The songs swivel in circles and say a lot of the same things, but the echoes don’t feel as pessimistic as they have in the past—they act as declarations, delivered with conviction and a sense of liberation. Although the songwriting tends to feel reprised, the trio operate once again on an incredible flair of percussive fulfillment and stabby guitar riffs.
