Wonderlick

(Future Farmer)
by Jamie Kiffel

From wasting away at the DMV to wondering how the bathers at Donner Lake might taste, Wonderlick isn’t alterna-pop but residents of an alternate pop universe where the most seemingly unimportant thoughts yield surprisingly great pop music. High school buddies Jay Blumenfield and Tim Quirk are fascinated with the space between moments of real interest – thinking about a fragile girl who dots her “i”s with hearts and sleeps beneath the shelf with all her old toys; being silently in love with two women who are really just roommates; even turning stunning soprano Wendy Allen’s nervous laughter into the high point of a hip, Euro-club track. These blips in time couldn’t possibly deserve their own songs, let alone good ones, and yet Wonderlick makes it happen.

Goofball noises from squiggy electronic trills to Kermit the Frog-like shouts add to the weird palette, making refreshingly new-sounding music. Finally, a real alternative to the mainstream: Songs born from life’s real time. This could be a soundtrack to buying postage stamps, getting a shopping cart at the grocery store, or tapping your pen on your desk; these are paeans to the rattlings of our everyday minds. Wonderlick proves that there is music between high emotions, and doing nothing can really be worth hearing about.
(PO Box 225128 San Francisco, CA 94122)