ALBUM REVIEW: Around The Sun – Lurk
Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson suggested undergoing an identity crisis was to question your sense of self and your place in the world. Sometimes this means you’ll question your purpose or passion in life. Sometimes it’s questioning your character. Other times it’s about having difficulty answering questions about yourself. For Chicago’s LURK, it’s all of the above on their debut album Around The Sun.
Not so much genre non-conformists as they are headless chickens running amok in punk rock’s coop, LURK switch guises more than DOJA CAT changes outfits at the VMAs. Throttling through ten songs in less than half an hour, the quintet throw up a crash course in modern punk pastiche, covering everything from hardcore to grunge, pop to post, and back again.
Fear Loathing is straight-up TURNSTILE-era hardcore, complete with spaced-out interludes. Sterilizer is the twisted night terror of THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN and MAXIMO PARK’s infidelity. Crack A Smile is grunge-punk in your grandma’s garage, the kind of thing MILK TEETH and FIDLAR were fiddling about with. As you can see, LURK make albums like they cook spaghetti: throw it at the wall and hope it sticks.
Luckily for them, almost everything does. Vocalist Kevin Kiley is as adept at screeching and screaming across punk-and-roll riffs as he is spacing out over lo-fi basslines or groaning out emotion on the grungier cuts. Hell, he even grinds up his voice in a Moog synthesiser for Bermuda’s bizarre left-turn into lo-fi robotics. Without Kiley’s own vocal identity crisis, LURK are a band lost in a litany of genres.
Around The Sun is a self-aware album. It’s conscious of its bipolar sunshine attitude. It’s even proud of it. Opener Chromosome pops off like a bottle of champagne as Kiley blurts in defiance “The old and the boring look and shake their heads – fuck ‘em!” LURK are a band built for blurring the lines, whether it makes sense in the shape of punk to come or not.
Like a lot of punk-rock in the early-20s, Around The Sun is an exploration of growing up in the digital age. Bermuda’s psychedelic robotics are symbolic of Kiley’s separation from normal life following emergency surgery, whilst See-Thru is a seething attack on filter culture and phony behaviour, emphasised best by the lines “Tap your phones/Monitor your dreams/I’m the static on your TV screen watching you.”
If you take the time to scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find yet another switched-on set of Chicagoans – there must be something in the water over the pond. The only problem is it’s all a little wham bam thank you ma’am, leaving you little time to take it all in. As LURK’s introduction to the world though, Around The Sun is an identity crisis crystalised in sound. Whilst most bands willingly attempting this would crash and burn, the Chicagoans pressurise their punk pastiche into diamonds in the rough.
Rating: 7/10
Around The Sun is set for release on September 17th via Pure Noise Records.
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