More from Blaine: “True to form, the songs on Bunny Hideout retain the dark, absurdist humor in the lyrics and music that is as challenging as Frank Zappa and as catchy as the Beatles. If you are looking for traditional verse/chorus song structures, though, you might have to look elsewhere.” Bunny Hideout is all at once noise rock, melodic, proggy, metal, punk and absurd. My top tracks skew heavily local: though I’m no football fan, the track “The Pack is Back” could be a new, seasonal state anthem and “Funky Christmas” continues the loving ribbing that Couch Flambeau frequently lays on Cudahy (non-Milwaukee folks: Cudahy is a suburb of sorts to Milwaukee on Lake Michigan that is the home to the Patrick Cudahy meat processing company — the small city always smells vaguely of bacon) on “Funky Christmas” (best verse: “Santa’s on his way, tremendous trash is in his sleigh. If you’re from Cudahy, he’s skipping you today!”). Also fun and super-silly is “Grape Kool Aid” (I can feel Jay’s late 60’s/early 70’s childhood vividly) and the weird juxtaposition between heavy-thrash and woodland creatures on “Bunny Hideout” is brilliant.

Couch Flambeau are probably not well-known outside of Milwaukee (and even inside Milwaukee probably only by a certain demographic) but they had a pretty significant influence on punk and noise rock in the Midwest in the 80’s. On the eve of the pandemic shutdown in March 2020, we caught Shellac at Turner Hall here in Milwaukee. Steve Albini made a special shout-out to Couch Flambeau – Jay Tiller was in the audience – crediting the band for helping shape his sound. Bunny Hideout was recorded at Albini’s studio in Chicago; again from Blaine’s article: “An uncredited cameo by Electrical Audio owner Steve Albini’s cat Pip makes an appearance on the record.”

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Classified as punk rock, it’s really more punk goes modern-experimental with a biting humorous edge . Their songs often give many nods to the Milwaukee area (i.e. the track “Hwy 100″ and ”Picasso’s Mailman” – shout out to Kenosha!) and to Midwestern culture (”Mobile Home” – their hit single, so to speak, though not on this LP).

Here is a photo of Jay (and his wife Renee) from 2003 at a wedding of our mutual friends, Greg and Natalie. I cannot remember exactly what happened, but he had the whole table in tears of laughter about the soup.

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