Surgery & Pleasure: Milky Clear Vinyl LP & Exclusive Signed Print

Brandon Hagen and Drew McDonald knew they wanted to be in a band since they were kids. When they were still just thirteen, the two would sneak into bars around their native Boston, just trying to play a gig.  Fast forward a few more years, and they made it official. Joined by bassist Zack Abramo, they formed Vundabar, and quickly began making a name for themselves around Boston’s DIY circles.

Just as theirs was a classic indie origin myth, Vundabar’s sound became a fever dream of the genre’s many branches and antecedents: sun-dappled surf guitar, arty post-punk, tangled math-rock, shimmering jangle-pop, and a little bit of grunge scuzz for good measure. Though the trio’s beginnings were scrappy, the single-minded purpose that had fueled them from the start soon yielded one of the sharpest catalogs in ‘10s and ‘20s indie.

After self-releasing five albums at a feverish pace, Vundabar drew a line in the sand. With 2022’s Good Old, the band celebrated their tenth anniversary by revisiting the past and clearing out the vaults. That record featured unreleased material and reimaginings of some key Vundabar songs. That included, of course, “Alien Blues,” the 2015 track that had skyrocketed to surprise TikTok popularity in 2021. It soon earned Vundabar a gold and then platinum record.

All along, Vundabar’s music progressed alongside its members, functioning as the band’s own coming-of-age tale. They’d already known that whatever followed Good Old would be a new chapter. Then, Hagen underwent one of the most tumultuous eight-week periods a person could imagine. He exited a long-term relationship that also meant he lost his temporary home in London. A few weeks later, his father suddenly died. Then, as if the universe was playing a cruel joke on Hagen, he broke his arm in France. He got home and wrote a song called “I Got Cracked,” kicking open the floodgates for what would become Vundabar’s sixth album and first for Loma Vista: Surgery And Pleasure.

Hagen’s answer for Vundabar’s new era arrived through deconstruction. Physically unable to play with the band or to strum a guitar, he wrote this new Vundabar material completely differently: Holed up alone and building layered guitar parts by recording individual pieces until they formed a whole. He’d been broken himself, and in turn broke down what the band was, gaining a better understanding along the way.

After cutting hundreds of demos, Hagen culled the material down to the TK songs that make up Surgery And Pleasure. These explore a complex cycle of grief and all the ways it manifests in unexpected forms — physicality and escapism in “Beta Fish,” sarcastic self-pity in “Let Me Bleed,” a moment of mercy and empathy in the sprawling six-minute epic “I Need You.”

If there’s any making sense of these things, Surgery And Pleasure chooses to view loss not as subtraction in life, but some kind of twisted addition to how we see the world around us. Musically, too, Vundabar have reemerged, the same but different than we’ve ever heard them. Carrying more scars, but more perspective for them.

“When things are that extreme it almost simplifies them,” Hagen concludes. “It’s so much change, all you can do is accept it. That’s death — and I’m alive.”