Night Lunch, Fire in the Rose Garden: REVIEW

Night Lunch, Fire in the Rose Garden (Mothland)

The second LP by local four-piece Night Lunch fuses modern and old-fashioned influences into a baroque pop blender. Some grand, sweeping strings and old-timey pianos are all over this LP, while frontman Lukie Lovechild sings a bit like if Matt Berninger of the National modelled his songwriting style more closely to that of Bruce Springsteen (the six-minute-plus “Junkyard of Love” feels particularly indebted to the Boss). Post-punk basslines and a more Ian Curtis-like delivery both drive the blistering “Flames of Love,” while single “God Bless the One I Love” — jeez, that’s a lot of songs with “love” in the title! — is a warm, refined mid-tempo ballad. While there’s still further the band could’ve gone with harnessing their diverse influences, Fire in the Rose Garden is a confident sophomore effort by a band with potential for even bigger and better to come. 7.5/10 Trial Track: “God Bless the One I Love”

For more on Night Lunch, please visit the Mothland website.

This article was originally published in the November 2023 issue of Cult MTL. 

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