Thinking Fellers Union Local 282: Strangers From the Universe

"Surrealism is a part of it. Pranks. Noise. Free improvisation. More interest in structure and sweetness than you might think at first, when all you notice are the smash cuts from one strange musical scene to the next. Soundtracks to imaginary pulp films, or religious rituals. Five singers, three guitars, bass, drums, banjo, mandolin, Optigan, taking turns or all going at once. Aching beauty, childhood regression, grotesque desire. Sort of like a lullaby that carries you into a nightmare from which you awake laughing."

"Eickelberg was proposing variations on the initials of her own unwieldy band name: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, the kind of name that arrives as a lark and settles in as an albatross. Seven months before, they had released Strangers From the Universe, an album that opens with a punk-surrealist ode to an enviable tortoise and closes with a folk-surrealist ballad about the end of humanity as we know it."

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282's Strangers From the Universe (1994) pairs punk-surrealist and folk-surrealist impulses across a deliberately fragmentary sequence. The music combines surrealism, pranks, noise, and free improvisation with moments of clear structure and sweetness, producing abrupt, cinematic scene changes. Instrumentation includes five singers, three guitars, bass, drums, banjo, mandolin, and Optigan, often layered or taking turns. The record moves between aching beauty, childhood regression, and grotesque desire, creating lullaby-like passages that shift into nightmares while maintaining a mischievous, quasi-commercial sensibility.

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