On the website for indie label Asthmatic Kitty, the proprietors have posted a warning to musicians who plan to send demos: "Please have some familiarity with our existing releases… we don't plan to release any hard rock, blues-rock, metal, or mainstream pop in the foreseeable future." So what kind of bands would be a good fit on AK? Ones with big sing-along choruses, a kitchen-sink approach to arrangement and instrumentation, and an eccentric, semi-psychedelic pop sensibility. Non-traditionalist Christianity preferred, but not required.
San Diego's Bunky is a more straightforward rock act than Asthmatic Kitty usually employs. Its debut album, Born To Be A Motorcycle, features a rumbling horn section, chugging rhythm guitar, and two lead singers, Emily Joyce and Rafter Roberts, who belt out songs like "Cute Not Beautiful" with direct, revealing lyrics. But Bunky has its quirks. Joyce sings in an effervescent cabaret style, which allows her to "tra-la-la" gaily through her half of the disjointed anti-anthem "Funny Like The Moon," while the punkier abrasion of Roberts' voice powers his half. The fact that the song even has two halves marks Bunky as slightly oddball, and explains how the band fits into the AK cosmology—that, and songs like "Gotta Pee," a noisy but insanely catchy sonic recreation of the urgent need to urinate. While Bunky's willingness to go anywhere in a song means it often doesn't stick around any one sound long enough to make an impression, it's hard to argue with the results on a song as pretty and otherworldly as "Lipstick Life," which could only come from a band used to venturing out.
Even Bunky though can't surpass Half-Handed Cloud, the Biblically informed, whimsically inclined outlet for charismatic singer-songwriter John Ringhofer. Half-Handed Cloud's third album Thy Is A Word & Feet Need Lamps offers musical versions of Old Testament stories, delivered in Ringhofer's high, flat voice—a cross between Michael Stipe and Wayne Coyne. Ringhofer favors brevity, which is all for the best on tracks like "You Get A Horseshoe," where the cutesy vocals and out-of-tune pianos get old quick. But Half-Handed Cloud isn't all church-youth-group vaudeville. Ringhofer shows a real gift for combining hummable melodies with avant-garde structure on the music-hall-inspired "Ezekiel Bread," a recounting of ancient cooking techniques that survives the line "Gather up your fuel from the loo / Make your bread over human poo." Similarly, the explosive 90-second historical sketch "The Famine's Hard" proves it's possible to cram Syd Barrett and The Who into a single song, and the fluid album-closer "Considered It A Loan" combines the best elements of Crosby, Stills & Nash and Simon & Garfunkel. Over time, Ringhofer's boundless enthusiasm and showmanship wins out over his twee sensibility, even though a song like the peppy acoustic genealogy lesson "Let's Go Javelin'" sounds like a puppet show waiting to happen.