Before putting out their self-titled debut LP, Wounded Lion released a video late last year for "Friendly?", a track that strikes an uncanny balance between sweetness and crunch. Its video-- a crude, Dada-esque PowerPoint presentation-- was uploaded to YouTube and soon found its way to other non-music-related websites under the "humor" tag. It seemed like a misinterpretation, if not a slight against the band. But after hearing their debut, that classification makes a little more sense.
Rather than using wit or irony to indicate their cleverness, Wounded Lion come off as affably goofy, more like class clowns than arch satirists. Over the 4/4 beats and simple strum patterns that dominate the record, singer Brad Eberhard nods to geography ("Hunan Province"), astrology ("Belt of Orion"), and centaurs ("Pony People") in a mannered and earnest singing voice. On "Degobah System", a song whose lyrics promise "crazy shit" yet refuse to acknowledge Star Wars outside of the title, the singer's slurred yapping sounds a little more like Adam Sandler than Jonathan Richman. As the band picks up the pace in the album's later half, Eberhard documents the mysterious "Omar Walk" ("What is the Omar Walk?/ That's the Omar Walk") and talks up Coors Light on "Silver People". It's as imaginative and scattershot as a high schooler's sketchbook, and about as deep.
Each track finds small variations to keep things from getting too repetitive-- vocal harmonies bolster "Hunan Province"; a Hammond organ shows up in "Pony People"-- and there are enough of these moments to show they've digested more strains of music than their otherwise simple songs suggest on first pass. Wounded Lion's offbeat humor might suggest a more honest and unguarded attitude than you'd find among their garage and lo-fi peers, but some more distinct tunes could have carried that perspective further.
