Making its way through the Montreal underground scene over the last decade with the two EPs Space Dementia (2016), Night Lunch (2018) and it’s first full-length, Wall of Love (2020), the honourable Night Lunch collective (Lukie Lovechild on guitar and vocals, Marlee Kay on bass and vocals, Wesley Dunphy on keyboards, Sailor on drums) knows well the toil and sweat that true rebel love requires when one tries to thrive through imperfection and awkwardness.
With its nostalgia for 1980s synths and its arrangements rooted in early R&B, soul, AM gold, and new wave, this new album Fire in the Rose Garden opens a retro-futuristic portal to the aesthetics of 1970s New York glam rock and punk bands, where roses spring from the junkyards of the unconscious. Under a foggy full moon with its home studio equipment, the band manages to concoct a kind of sophisticated and sexy sonic depravity for a pagan gospel where subliminal messages help couples unite sexual energy with the energy of the heart.
Written like a love letter tainted with a deadly crime, the album might not seem convincing on your first listen, but behind its sunglasses and its strange, nervous-system-deteriorating manner, treasures covered in rubble are well hidden within the dirt. It’s a fun and weird album for Mothland’s burgeoning audience, building towards the forgotten era of CBGB.
