Wonderlick, Topless at the ARCO Arena

Topless at the ARCO Arena is the first album from Wonderlick since their eponymous release in 2002. With two former members of Too Much Joy in the band, it’s tempting to skip breezily over the pretty surface of this album and chalk it up as another tongue-in-cheek record full of the acerbic wit that was TMJ’s stock-in-trade. Certainly the album is replete with ironic humor and sarcasm, and the smorgasbord of genre-bending post-modern pop hooks is fun to listen to, but don’t let Wonderlick’s smooth taste fool you into missing a rewarding experience.

Although seven years in the making, as the band had time and money to record (mostly through donations from fans), Topless at the ARCO Arena still hangs together as a concept album loosely centered around the problematic intersection of art and commercialism and reaching from there into an impressive array of subjects. The band masterfully juxtaposes accessible and never-repetitive music with intelligent lyrics and subject matter that deal with life’s many contradictory impulses. Their songs address issues like the freedom of falling in love and the fear of actually letting it happen, the hunger for what is real and meaningful and the allure of the quick fix – of what makes us feel good now, the desire for personal independence and the need to be needed, the hope for a transcendent experience and the bitter disappointment of a life that often falls short of what we dream of for ourselves. What’s truly marvelous about this album is that in spite of, or perhaps because of, its life and death subject matter, the obvious pleasure the band has in making music shines through. They provide a finished pop polish that makes a sweet coating over a sometimes bitter pill, and they manage to do so without ever becoming hopelessly cynical or falling prey to pat answers.

Like the band’s name itself, Wonderlick offers up a tasty blend of the sacred and the profane. “This Song Is a Commercial” quips about itself, “It’s vaguely defined in order to appeal / to the maximum number of fans / Has parts designed to make you feel / That someone finally understands,” and then follows up with, “Your rage and your fear and your sadness and your dreams / Your dependence on certain lotions and creams / Your most beautiful hopes and most terrible pain / The urge you have to jump at oncoming trains.” Wow. Are they sincere, or is that the part designed to seduce me into believing someone finally understands? Just when I think the joke is on me, the next verse in the song comes: “Your reluctance to sing along now / And the reasons you’ll do it anyhow / Gimme a kiss, gimme something new now / Gimme something real no one can see through now.” While skewering human foibles, Wonderlick never becomes so arrogant as to not include themselves in the joke.

“You First” is a song about falling in love, but love as only Wonderlick can describe it. It starts out with a sinister, throbbing bassline and morphs into a stirring anthem that’s uplifting without being forced or serving up the commercial schlock we are cautioned about. And the lyrics follow a similar trajectory. Singing about his wife, we learn, “The day she said, ‘I love you’ / I had the worst reply / I should have said it back / But all I said was, ‘Why?'” The sad inadequacy of that moment is palpable, and then comes the chorus and a moment of redemption that’s gone almost as quickly as it came: “We are scared but we are willing / Unprepared and unrehearsed / Could be lame or could be thrilling / You go first.” Again, Wonderlick artfully describes our conflicted natures: our greatest virtue, the transformative capacity to love, so often undermined by self-centered fear.

“Fuck Yeah!” pulls off the neat trick of being simultaneously about suicide and self-love, and there’s a great cover of The Clash’s “Janie Jones” that takes a 2:05 song and stretches it into a downtempo shuffle that lasts almost four minutes. “Devil Horns” first comes across as a snarky slam on Def Leppard and their mindless fans paying far too much for tickets and t-shirts, complete with a mocking sing-song melody. The gospel influences at the end of the song are the final biting punch line to the joke. But Wonderlick is never so simple — in the midst of ridiculing concert-goers in search of some kind of transcendent experience, the lyrics affirm what those of us who love music know, that such experiences are possible. Suddenly the rousing gospel sounds at the end of the song no longer sound derisive but instead inspirational.

So it goes with the rest of the record, each song serving up a compelling blend of hope and despair, redemption and humiliation. And in the mix is the message. The album is about the spaces in between, those moments of grace when, even if we fall short of our very best, we are spared the pain of our own demons and find solace — if only for a moment.