Lutefisk – Deliver from Porcelain: Themes and Variations

 Overall rating: 3.6 (out of 10) Label: Bong Load Custom Records

Why do I own this? Was it in a dollar bin? The better songs sound like some cross between Mudhoney and Brainiac, but many of them sound like a cross between Weezer and a bad cover band that specializes in Misfits and Guns and Roses covers. Okay, “Asymmetric Bee Factory” seems to be a nicely little fucked up piece that I could see including in a radio show set, with its meandering feedback and distorted digitized spoken word bit, and “Mindless Criminal Activity” is a nice noise-collage piece that is similarly suitable for inclusion in a college-radio set (although at 18:26 it may go on a bit too long – I’d personally recommend truncating the beginning portion). But these are buried in the CD at #’s 8 & 10. And really, I can’t see listening to them on the regular, although I can’t see listening to any of my Masonna records on the regular anymore, and I used to love that shit. Maybe I’m getting old. But the fact that this has sat on my shelf untouched for over a decade, and has a piece of paper inside with “#10” written on it – presumably to remind me to play that one on my radio show – that tells me that this CD goes in the sell pile, if anyone will take it. I think I’ve also got a Lutefisk 7” somewhere. Tracks 8-11 would actually make a nice EP, maybe I’ll copy them before ditching the rest. If I were judging this just based on those last four tracks, I’d give this 7/10.