It's fitting that Hannah Judge would name her band fanclubwallet- it's kind of the perfect name for the variety of indie rock she's playing. Coy and fragile, gentle and introspective- it's like a small pocket of feelings you can climb into and hide away in with the comfort and company of your own thoughts- a clubhouse of one, suspended in a sling of reflective moods. Her debut You Have Got To Be Kidding Me, is very credible in what it sets out to accomplish- examining life from an engaged removal. Many of the songs were written while Hannah was living with her parents and focusing on her comic (as in an illustrator, not the stand-up variety) career- somehow, this phase in her life resulted in an album rather than a new American Splendor-styled, graphic auto-biography. The project seems to act as a mirror of her life in the moment that it was written though- intentionally or not. Breakups and boredom, slacking while on the skids, a mid-life crisis cropping up in one's early '20s- it's all there and unpacked in a cloudy kind of drawl that is part J Mascis with a dash of Nina Persson, and backed by illuminating shades of staccato guitars and dreamy California-sun-kissed feedback, punctuated with percussion that overflows with personality and synthesizers that sizzle while diverting down clever, Dan Deacon-inspired circuits. Its present insularity is as much a choice as it is an embodiment of its inescapable inspirations; bands like Tegan and Sara and Rilo Kiley, but also harkening back even further to groups like the Violent Femmes and Teenage Fanclub- music that always feels like it is being performed in a bedroom for a small group of friends, or a pile of stuffed animals, even when it's given the stage and the wattage deserving of a summer festival headliner. You Have Got To Be Kidding Me is full of music that sounds like it is whispering in your ear, even when it's putting every ounce of sweat, blood, and runny eyeliner it has into a persuasive, full-body rock anthems. No joke, You Have Got To Be Kidding Me makes a great first impression.
