I must have been about thirteen when Timbuk3 released "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades." It was the mid-1980s and the optimism of the decade was still going full tilt. AIDS hadn't quite hit home; the recession wasn't even a rumor yet. Today, if a band sang lyrics like "I've got a job waiting for my graduation/Fifty thou a year'll buy a lotta beer/Things are going great, and they're only getting better" albeit without due sarcasmwe'd just laugh.
But Timbuk3 has always managed to deliver the sarcasm when we needed it most, and their 1986 hit endures as a result. While it was originally a genuinely upbeat song, it still stands up a decade laternot only because it reminds us of a sentiment almost entirely forgotten, but because it applies now as a bitter testament to what may never be.
The new album, A Hundred Lovers, is as much a chronicle of the concerns of the '90s as albums like Greetings from Timbuk3 and Eden Alley were of the '80s. If the new album has a theme, it's lovemore precisely, what's wrong with it and how to make it work in a world hell-bent on idealizing heterosexuality while condemning its alternatives to the grave.
"Sunshine is Dangerous" leads us by the hand into the album, to a woman who warns us against romanticism: "And love?/Well, that's obvious/Beware of too much happiness." The title track offers one translation of promiscuity by cramming a hundred different personalities into the mind of a single woman. The first single, "Just Wanna Funk With Your Mind," offers another alternative by preferring the mindfuck to its physical counterpart: "I don't wanna touch you there/I wouldn't wanna make you go blind/I just wanna funk with your mind."
Lovers may also be the band's most topical album to date. "Legalize Our Love" is an anthem supporting homosexual rights. "Prey" brings that subject, along with other current controversies, face to face with Christendom: "Every time you say a prayer, you prey on me/You pray to God each day/That your son won't turn out gay/And your daughter won't bring someone home like me."
Musically, Timbuk3 is, well, still Timbuk3. They remain the heaviest contender in the arena of countrified funk-rock. However, long-gone are the days of the married couple fronting their infamous boombox. Since 1991's Big Shot in the Dark album, the band's been a full four- piece including Courtney Audain on bass, percussion and vocals and Wally Ingram on drums. The two share writing credits with guitarists/vocalists Barbara K. and Pat MacDonald, the group's founding pair.
And I do mean full. Lovers has the traditional Timbuk3 sound, but with a richness and joy it's never had before. Layer upon layer of guitars, percussion, vocals and harmonica make this record a real listening treat, especially for those who stuck with the band though its lean years. This is no doubt thanks to the band's "Dirty Digital" process which involves mixing analog and digital recording techniques to create whole new sounds. In a recent interview with Cake magazine, MacDonald explained this strange marriage in the production of "Shotgun Wedding." "We actually recorded two versionsthe rough one and the pretty Barbara one and faded them together," he said.
The album's most haunting track is "Kitchen Fire." It combines the pretty lute-and-choir sound of Big Shot's "'49 Plymouth" with the story of a woman trapped too long in a useless marriage. The song creates a metaphor between the abandoned dinner and the desperate wife: "Something's burning/The bird in the grill/Discovered today a new way to fly/At the crackling fire."
"Not Yet Gone" promises a bright future from this band which has already delivered us ten years of rock's survival instinct, whether or not that message is the intended one: "They think if they just close their eyes we'll go away/Too bad/They just don't realize we're here to stay."
Despite the interesting times we've been living through, Timbuk3 still manages to offer a bit of hope in their cynical songs. "Knock on wood," they suggest in "Sunshine is Dangerous." "Life is good."
This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise.