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Music

Lumpy and the Dumpers Make Sloppy Mutilated Punk

Dumpers play sloppy and sludgy punk that gets mutilated through some munted speech apraxia-like vocals.

One of these days you’re going to face the meat chanted twice by a guy who sounds a little drunk and a lot crazy followed by a 1-2-Fuck you!

This was my introduction to Lumpy and the Dumpers after a friend sent me the St Louis band’s demo tape to play on my radio show. It was one of the most retarded and best songs I’d heard in ages. I played it on the show as well as in the car and while grocery shopping.

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Led by Lumpy (who also runs Spotted Race a tape label that documents the spazz side of the St Louis punk scene) the Dumpers play sloppy and sludgy punk that gets mutilated through some munted speech apraxia like vocals.

The video for "Sex Pit" has Lumpy thrashing about naked in a kiddy pool full of slime. The first 500 copies of their latest 7” on Total Punk sold out in like 36 hours but that makes sense because it contains the song "Gnats in the Pisser" with one of the most busted saxophone solos ever.

Introducing my new favourite band.

Noisey: To "Face the meat", what does that entail?
Lumpy: "Face the meat" in layman's terms means, “Don't be a wanker” or “Stop being such a fucking Twinkie”. An older St Louis band called Suburban Smash had a song called "Pick a Side". That's sort of what it's about. The song is a dog on all those flaccid wimps, those fuckin’ namby pambys. I guess it's also kind of like Heresy's "Face Up to It". You have to exorcise those demons, man.

You used to drum in Sweet Teeth and you started Lumpy as a one-man/four-track project. But now you are backed by “the best backing band in punk rock”. This evolution seems to have been gradual. Was there a plan?
I don't know who said that quote about the Dumpers! Fuck those guys. They are all scabs, if they were the best they wouldn't be so damn easy to replace. There was no intention when I recorded the first demo to play live. Sweet Tooth ended in December 2011 when my dumb brother moved to Portland, one of the worst places in the world. From January to April I had a super busy semester in school and literally did not play any music, so once summer of 2012 came I decided to "treat myself" so to speak and write and record some rowdy punk all by myself.

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Aren’t Uncle Tupelo from Belleville? How country is it? Or is it alt-country? Grain silos and pick-ups trucks?
I lived in Belleville for a year and before that another Illinois suburb town close by for five years. I don't know who Uncle Tupelo is. There are grain silos and pick-up trucks yeah but it's also a pretty decent sized town (around 40,000) so you don't pick up on all of that until you drive further into Illinois. Places like Freeburg and Milstadt are way more country. Like ‘black people can't walk into cafes’ country.

What is the best basement to play in the mid west?
Who knows? They're all pretty similar and fun. How about Bonerville, the longest running basement in St Louis. They let me splatter the crowd in slime and donuts on my birthday, which was a Lumpy/Dawn of Humans show. All the slammers mashed it down into gravy, which stayed on the floor for weeks and probably attracted tons of rats.

Who or what are your influences for the tape covers?
Boredom is my main inspiration—I draw most of the tape covers at work when there's nothing to do. I try to draw the nastiest and dumbest things I can muster. Spiders are an influence. Nick Blinko. Pettibon. Neck Face. Sam Ryser. Jason from Blotter. The Mask. Repulsing people is the motive I guess, one time I made this Kremlin flyer with a giant wiener peeing out worms and gave it to some girl and she frowned super hard and gave it back. That's an influence.

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There’s a quote at the beginning of the Sex Pit video “Inhibitions are like the bones in a creature. You pull all the bones out and you get a floppy jelly’. What does it mean? Did you rip that from True Detective?
I have no idea—the guy who created the video put that in there. But it's not from True Detective, it came out before that.

Both in the video and the footage of you playing in front of some local record store you are wearing a pretty sweet blue jacket. Where’d did you score that?
That was my Dad's. It got destroyed for that music video unfortunately, along with my sweet gas station gift shop shirt that said "B_G B_TTS: Things I like and cannot lie about". My friend got it for me and he wrote O and A in the blanks so it said Bog Batts. Now it's gone. Sorry Nic.

There are Spanish subtitles on the video. How much of a Spanish speaking audience does Lumpy and the Dumpers have?
That was another way to make it even dumber, because I'm pretty sure there are not that many. Hopefully it attracts more of the chavos.

You have just released a sold out 7” on Total Punk a label seemed born for Lumpy and vice versa. Did you get in touch with Rich via the usual email ways?
I thought his name was Randall Cummings! That's the name connected to his email, man, what a let down. Yeah he hit me up through email last fall for a record. At that point I had never heard of his label but he sent me some of the singles—Bits of Shit and Life Stinks, cool stuff--he'd put out and they looked and sounded great so I said, “Why not?”

Follow Tim on Twitter: @Dettolforever

Lookout for the upcoming Lumpy and the Dumpers LP containing the cassingle, both 7"s, and unreleased tracks out on Erste Theke Tonträger in Europe and Space Ritual.