Bubblegum Lemonade: Ten Years Younger EP
By
Evan Sawdey 24 March 2008
PopMatters Interviews Editor
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.
Evan Sawdey began contributing to PopMatters in late 2005 after contributing for years to his college newspaper
The Knox Student. Evan became the Associate Interviews Editor for PopMatters in the summer of 2008, and then the full Interviews Editor a year after that. Since joining, Evan's work has been written for and been quoted/featured in a wide array of publications including SLUG Magazine, The Metro (U.K.), Soundvenue Magazine (Denmark), the Daily Dot, and multiple national newspapers. Evan has been a guest on WNYC's Soundcheck (an NPR affiliate), was the Executive Producer for the
Good With Words: A Tribute to Benjamin Durdle album (available for free at
GoodWithWordsAlbum.com), and wrote the liner notes for the 2011 re-release of
Andre Cymone's hit 1985 album A.C. (Big Break Records) and the 2012 re-releases of
Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder's standalone 1985 pop effort (Virgin/Gold Legion),
the JoBoxers' 1983 debut album Like Gangbusters,
'Til Tuesday's 1985 debut Voices Carry, and
Plastic Bertrand's 1978 album AN 1 (all Hot Shot Records). He is a current member of The Recording Academy and resides in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow him
@SawdEye should you be so inclined.