Bubblegum Lemonade: Ten Years Younger EP

Who the hell does Laz think he is? Well, unfortunately none of us really know. He’s just… Laz. He fronts two very similar-sounding bands whose names remind us all of ice cream flavors that never were: Strawberry Whiplash and Bubblegum Lemonade. This young Glasgow lad does the music for both groups but only actually sings with Bubblegum, and that band’s Ten Years Younger EP is willing to throw all its got into the pop-rock stratosphere: the title track is wedged somewhere between the Smiths’ early recordings and the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, taking the best of both worlds. “Unsafe at Any Speed” is a fuzz-drenched cocktail of surf music with a Dandy Warhol lemon put in for flavor. As you can imagine, these songs are about as lasting as a fudgesicle on a summers day, but sometimes that’s exactly what you’re in the mood for. All that disappoints is a relatively lifeless cover of the song “That Thing You Do!”, penned by Fountains of Wayne frontman Adam Schlesinger for the Tom Hanks movie of the same name, here given a bland monotone treatment that removes all pep and energy from the original.