You’re at an antiques store, digging through a crate of used records. You come across a compilation from a local radio station called 97.2 The ROCK or something. Judging by the album’s cover, the station had its heyday in the summer of 1978. You don’t recognize any of the bands on the album, but you buy it anyway.
You eventually spin the record. Most of the songs are forgettable relics of their time, but there’s one that stands out. It’s so incredibly good. Catchy, hooky, exquisitely played and recorded. Kind of rock, kind of pop. So, so good. How was this song not a worldwide hit? This was a local band? Who was this group?
That’s the feeling you get while listening to Lunde. On the new The Shotgun Theory, the Milwaukee trio (singer-songwriter Nate Uhrich, drummer Jeremiah Lunde, bassist Josh Janiak) deliver an album’s worth of songs that play like long-lost would-be hits from various eras of FM radio. (“The best of the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and today!”) That Lunde pulls this off without being a self-conscious “retro” band makes the record all the better.
Opener “Gone Way Too Long” sets the stage with a bouncy pop vibe that scores big with Uhrich’s buttery-smooth vocals and a top-shelf guitar solo. It’s more on the ’90s end of things, though pinning down a specific era for any of Shotgun‘s 10 tracks is something of a chore. (This is a group that counts both The Beach Boys and bands like Boston and America as influences.) From there it’s gem after gem: the jangly “Hurricane” (a re-record from the Lunde’s 2020 debut Living Strange), the charming “Dinosaur Song,” the fantastic Dwight Twilley Band-esque “Hide Away” (complete with sax), and the two-for-the-price-of-one closing ballad “Take It Slow Pts. One And Two.”) There’s even room for a sparkling cover of The Lemon Twigs’ “Foolin’ Around.”
Lunde formed in 2018 when cousins (Jeremiah) Lunde and Uhrich reconnected at a family gathering. That old-school family-band origin story carries over to Shotgun‘s old-school sound. “Most everything was cut live to tape at our studio in Kenosha,” Jeremiah told Radio Milwaukee last year. “That means you’re limited to 24 tracks and only real hardware equipment, no plugins, auto-tune, etc. We love that sound—no nonsense and authentic.”
Looking for tomorrow’s rediscovered hits today? Here they are. Lunde has plenty of ’em.
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