We love Krill here at Impose. Really, I think anybody with any ties to the Northeast underground rock scene loves Krill. But this post isn’t about Krill; it’s about the band that Luke Pyenson (Krill’s former drummer) is now a part of after leaving Boston to go to grad school in London. This loosely Krill-affiliated band is called brunch (lowercase intentional), and has that familiarly quirky ’90s sound that we’ve come to know from many of the bands making guitar-centric music today.
brunch is set to release their properly recorded debut EP sometime in the next couple of months, but until then we’ve been graced with the release’s first single, “Sea Toad”. The track plays with time signatures but maintains a strong pop sensibility. Much of that is due to the catchy vocal part and lush guitar parts. brunch—made up of Sean Brook, Adrian McCusker, Tom Rundell and Luke Pyenson—are one of those fun bands that takes cues from the fun bands that came before them. Snippets of Weezer, Polvo and (of course) Pavement can all be heard, but they’re never drowned out in their influences. Impose is stoked to be premiering “Sea Toad” which can be streamed via the embed below.
We also caught up with Luke to talk about his new project. Topics covered included (but were not limited to): Gchat as paradigm shift, flaky drummers, playing with Eugene Quell, and the differences between playing in Krill and in brunch. You can read the conversation beneath the embed.
lukepyenson: yo
Impose: cool
also to be honest i’ve never really used gchat before so this is new and ~exciting~ for me
lukepyenson: seriously? man your life’s abt to change
Impose: i know i feel the paradigm shifting
anyway, this is supposed to be an interview about your music
lukepyenson: bring it
Impose: so in the email you sent us about brunch you bring up how you joined the band, but since i can’t really copy/paste the email would you mind explaining how the band formed and such–and why you suddenly went from krill to england?
lukepyenson: sure so
this is brunch’s creation myth:
basically i left krill a little less than a year ago to move to london for graduate school
when i got here, i didn’t touch drums for 6 months
and the only shows i went to were bands from home who came through on tour
in late feb, jonah [from krill] forwarded me an email sent to the krill account from this dude named sean saying he was a big krill fan, in a london band, and needed a drummer for a new project
he said something like “all the drummers in london are wankers”
i thought to myself
wow
true british sland
slang
rly feelin’ this
so i responded and met up with sean for a beer before a so so glos/ezra furman show
Impose: (sending “lol” would downplay my audible chuckle/giggle)
lukepyenson: he was a great dude
we got along
i met another dude in the band, tom
sean is the singer/guitarist
tom is bassist
uh
yeah it all felt good
so sean sent me some demos
he sent me a few but ‘sea toad’ really stood out and when i heard it i was like yeah okay this’ll work
so we got together to play, and it felt really good and yeah
since then
we are brunch
the three of them had been playing in another band in london called the recusants
but their drummer left
fuckin’ drummers always leaving
but they wanted to start a new project anyway
so brunch was born i guess the night of our first practice
we played a couple shows in london and then our third show was in brighton for eugene quell’s first EP release
who i got in touch with through dan from eis [Exploding In Sound]
we have been playing a bunch in london
and played again with eugene quell last month at a show where he actually proposed to his now-fiancee mid-set
he as in toby
Impose: yup yup toby’s a cool dude–i think i’m impose’s toby expert
lukepyenson: yeah i read your piece, it was great!
Impose: ahh man thanks!
lukepyenson: so yeah basically that is the story of how brunch came to be
two of them are krill fans
somehow found out i was living here
emailed krill
there you go
really weird for me
Impose: oh yeah, was gonna ask if that was weird/creepy
lukepyenson: more than anything it was surprising
that anyone cared about krill enough to a) know that i had moved to london or b) would actually email krill to ask about me
i had absolutely no idea what to expect from the music or the people, but they are not creeps and the music is good so it all worked out
we are “mates” now as they say
Impose: picking up the lingo, so that’s a surely good sign
lukepyenson: i truly hope i’m not picking up the lingo too much
Impose: could be fun tho
so how does drumming for brunch differ from drumming in krill?
lukepyenson: hmmmm
well krill is a 3 piece and brun is a 4 piece
so
that is a big difference
in krill i feel like my parts were more exposed
because the music is realtively sparse and there are only three of us
so like everything comes through really clearly
uh but in a 4 piece
it’s a little less
i don’t know
it’s not quite as important
what i do
because there’s more going on generally
but brunch’s songs, i think, are more poppy
so my parts are a bit more straightforward
but like, sea toad, this song, for instance is in 9
lots of krill songs are in 9, too
that is probably part of what drew me to the song and made me think yeah i should play in this band
theme from krill, sick dogs for ian, for example
both in 9
so in a way my drum part for this song is more krill-ish maybe just by virtue of the fact that it’s in 9, but i don’t know
Impose: i guess the poppy nature of sea toad makes the 9 feel a little more natural/less disjointed–like theme from krill feels so wacky
lukepyenson: yeah i think it feels natural
Impose: anyway, anything else you want to put out there?
lukepyenson: uhhhhhhhh
we’re playing some shows in the US in the fall
and our release show for this EP is a week from tomorrow (thurs aug 14) at a place called powerlunches in london
