The Flunks

Once upon a time, Indie sat upon a rock. With it’s hard foundation it attracted a lot of attention and junk along the way. But when the rock merged with the establishment, Indie departed. She occupied a jukebox for a while, where she came across Punk. Punk went to sleep and his friends thought he was dead. He was simply resting as he waited for a Renaissance. He didn’t know if it ever came, but he had a feeling. So Indie married Punk in the plight to open his eyes.

Hailing from Brooklyn, New York these child-like musos don’t follow any rules. It’s like neo-magic out of the twilight zone with a punk twist. The Flunks frontman Tony says “You’ll remember the day you fell in love with music. Because today is the repeat of your love affair with sound”. No, they haven’t turned into princesses since their last album, but shifted to what they call a more awakened Indie-Punk. Very existential. When was the last time you fell down and couldn’t get up by yourself? Be it blasé or cliché, with a gravity shift, the Flunks will crush the groundwork and stampede your heart’s momentum. No one ever said you can’t be in love without being a sissy. Their 2008 album Ceci N’est Pas Une Band is due out in August. The idea of the album title and imagery came from a famous painting of a pipe by René Magritte.

The Flunks help lighten the feeling of cleaning out dirty sinks and drains if you do it while listening to “Never Too Old For Scooter Love”, which is the first single, due out in July. One song is sad. “Lola’s Hotdog” bluntly put oozes lines of dismay and lonesome. The feeling is that there is no hope. There is no upbeat feel, it is a folk song of impossible qualities. It is truly believed until the ending, where a C major chord sparks a light, and you can see through the tunnel which was originally a hole of blackness with a whole lot of sadness and a hole to peek through and see. This lends the track to being one of the best of the album.

As their moniker would associate, none of the group members flunked out of…anything. All four finished highschool and two of the boys graduated from Arts Colleges. So then where did the name come from? One sunny Downtown day, bass player Scotty was writing rhymes. He realised a lot of cool words ended in ‘unk’. Junk, Punk, Crunk, Funk etc, until he came to Flunk; the finest of them all. It was also very anti-establishment, an imperative image-consciousness to have if he wished to stay a part of the scene he was apparently in. Scotty now also has a fetish for hyphenated words, so uses this tendancy frequently in his song lyrics.

Between albums, The Flunks headed down under to Australia where they recorded four songs off their latest album and meshed with the local talent. They played one Sydney show to sold out fans. Although flanno fashion seemingly died out, The Flunks brought it back with their 2006 released EP, Flanarchy, and had fashionistas in confusion of whether or not to “Embrace the Flannelette”, which was the first track on the album. It was a Sex Pistols inspired album, with extra safety pins, more plaid and plenty of anarchist satire.

They are not so much post-Punk anymore, but more post-Indie on their latest release, with an experimental rock sound, Jimmi Hendrix-likened guitar riffs and Robert Smith-esque (The Cure) vocals.

Rules never stopped a child, so they shouldn’t stop you.

*****

This review also appeared in Sickling Magazine, and features on the bands Myspace page.

www.myspace.com/theflunks