As I scrambled feverishly through December trying to catch up on all the new albums that came out in 2020 and, of course, became completely neurotic and overwhelmed as I filled up my twerpy little Excel spreadsheet in a vain attempt to keep track of everything that I still need to listen to enough times to make a reasonable opinion on by the arbitrary and completely made-up deadline of January 1st, I couldn’t help thinking about the handful of older albums that I had never listened to before 2020 and enjoyed way more than ANYTHING that actually came out in 2020. Suburban Lawns’ first and only record from 1981 is one of them. (For the record, the other three albums with this distinction are the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut from 1989, Guerilla Toss’ Twisted Crystal from 2018, and Free Salamander Exhibit’s Undestroyed from 2016)

Suburban Lawns was the incredibly short-lived project from over-educated CalArts students Vex Billingsgate, Su Tissue, Frankie Ennui, Chuck Roast, and John Gleur. They formed the band while in school in 1978 and likely spent a drug-fueled orgy night coming up with those hilarious pseudonyms. The band gained some minor notoriety with their early ’79 single “Gidget Goes to Hell”, whose music video was featured on Saturday Night Live in ’80. GOOD GOD, THIS WAS EVEN BEFORE MTV. Then they came out with “Janitor” as a single in ’80. Then they came out with this album. Then they basically split up and went their own separate ways, some deciding to try their hand at other (failing) music projects and others continuing their formal music education.

They disappeared as quickly as they appeared with no real fanfare and no real legacy other than this cult favorite self-titled 28-minute studio album. They all seem to have lived, and continue to live, unremarkable lives after college. Su Tissue, especially, continued her life in relative obscurity to the point where internet creeps who probably had a crush on her tried many times to find out where she was or what she has been up to (a simple search for “Su Tissue” leads to several articles over the years with this premise). As it stands, this fading-out of the band created an aura of intrigue over their only album, which is a very real gem for the lucky few who happen to stumble upon it all these years later. As the decades go by, the quick blip on the radar that was Suburban Lawns seems more and more mysterious, as if it were some sort of alien encounter that only crazy people witnessed and nobody remembers.

A cursory listen of Suburban Lawns brings forth easy comparisons to bands like Devo, the Raincoats, and the Shaggs. Angular, diverse, strange and abstruse, yet sharp music meant to hit both hemispheres of the ol’ brain with razorlike efficiency. The band is truly a collective; each member providing vocals and contributing a nearly-equal share of the writing credits across the 14 short songs (none break the 3-minute mark). The band isn’t afraid to be weird, like all the best bands of that era, and if you’re not already strapped in before the first lines of “Flying Saucer Safari” then you’ll never keep up! “Station wagon full of Fritos, Coke, and Twinkies, stale Doritos/Head for the desert, Interstate 10, pull off anywhere, and then/Concentrate, don’t make a sound, we’ll psychokinetically pull one down!” Hell yeah, wranglin’ UFOs?? I’m game!

Song after song develops new angles to the irresistible self-aware weirdness. “Not Allowed” awkwardly stumbles along on a meterless cadance, almost Zappa-esque the way the vocalist (it’s not clear who any of them are except when Su Tissue sings) drags on the first lines and catches up with himself later. “Yooou…arrree…nooot…a-…llowed…tooo…seee…/Untilyoustop takingthose piiiiiills”. “Gossip” is the first real bit of perplexing Su Tissue poetry that we get, spoken like Cher meets Grimes over choppy guitar licks (“You’re a bit chagrin, languid languor/Oh, stato staunch, oh so welkin/Lies, paradox, a parade of rest/Lies, paradox, a parade of rest“).

I think “Protection” sounds exactly like a peak-era Sonic Youth track, right down to the nervous guitar riffing and the Thurston Moore/Kim Gordon “I’m fuckin’ cool” spoken word arrogance. I mean, come on. “Nobodies, you’re famous/You want your name next to mine/Come along Buster, Rover/Sporting suits and ties/And makin’ out and makin’ out/And makin’ out and makin’ out“. Suburban Lawns was doing this shit ten years earlier, I guess. There’s no way Sonic Youth didn’t know about this band.

My favorite three songs are all in a row. Starting with “Janitor”, the quintessential Su Tissue-led track based around a story about Tissue having a conversation with a friend in a loud room. She asked him what he did for a living and she thought he said “Oh my genitals!” instead of “I’m a janitor.” And the rest is history! I like the way she sings the lines “Who-o-o-o-o’s your mother?/Who’s your father?!” like some weird-girl high school anime fan. Yes, I said I liked it. Next is “Computer Date”, which lasts but a minute but crams in a whole 1981-era IBM 4.77 MHz 16kB hard drive worth of electronic bleeps and bloops like Kraftwerk meets Devo, snarkily commenting on finding love through a computer almost fifteen years before Match.com was even a thing! And then “Mom and Dad and God”, a quick two-tone ska number that comments on religion coming between two people in a romantic relationship.

Man, all these songs are good! Another special mention goes to “Green Eyes”, which features more Su Tissue poetry that I’m not even going to bother attempting to comprehend (“He’s posing like he’s quite big-headed/I know you’re a heartful mind/The shades are the Venetian kind/They are drawn down blind/For only lines are shadowed in angles/On my wall in the daytime” etc. etc.), BUT the hook here anyway is that EVERY hyper guitar riff between each stanza is different, and combined with the oblique poetry it just grips you and doesn’t let go.

And then, before you know it, the album is over. And you want to listen to it again, because all the strangeness and intricate guitar melodies and vocal diversity leaves you wanting more than 28 minutes. And it’s too bad that there were never anymore albums after this. The good news is that the 2018 reissue of the album tacks on the entire Baby EP from 1983 as bonus tracks, which almost completes your Suburban Lawns collection. All you need is the 1979 Gidget Goes to Hell single and you’ve got everything the band ever made. So what are you waiting for?

VERY GOOD