Austin Sound

At first glance – not listen, but glance! Pay attention! – it’s hard not to imagine the Service Industry as three (or four) snotty Austin kids with shitty beards and even shittier jobs serving you a burrito. After all, the band is named the Service Industry; the album is called “Keep The Babies Warm”; the front artwork spoofs Pink Floyd’s “Animals” with Shamu dumping out (or birthing) another baby Shamu instead of a floating pig; the back artwork spoofs Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother” with a cow head on a diapered baby; and the song titles sound oh-so-serious! Fortunately, imaginations are wrong (just ask John Lennon) and the Service Industry is actually a talented band and not the novelty it could have been. They just happen to be a talented band with a sense of humor.

If it weren’t likely to result in food being spit on by the wait staff, the first point of reference for Keep The Babies Warm would be the Traveling Wilburys. So take that, punk rock imagination. This band listened to the Traveling Wilburys and, if they were to deny it, don’t tip them because they are lying. The album opener – “Liquid Meat (Into A Form)” – is an ode to the McRib, but instead of Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, that’s Mike McCoy and Julie Lowery harmonizing about McDonald’s edible delights. It’s like “Handle With Care”, just funnier. The title track (more Wilburys, this time with a tinge of Elvis Costello and the Kinks) and “My Resignation” (best described as “Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2” for stoned busboys) continue the tongue in cheek service industry jokes going, but the songs are actually amazingly catchy with just the right touch of edgy jangle.

Even when the Service Industry isn’t singing specifically about the fun times of menial food related careers, they’re poking jabs at their lives and, quite frankly, all our lives. “All In One” so perfectly sums up the gadget-loving affliction so many suffer from, skewering the user, the purchaser, our society - no one is safe. In “My Rise To Greatness”, the question isn’t whether McCoy is making fun of himself or not, it’s how many of our friends (and ourselves) is he mocking? In the end, on the album closer “Seaworld”, after sticking their middle fingers in Butch Vig and Thom Yorke’s desserts, the Service Industry reveal what most of those kind, smiling, shiny happy people serving us are thinking about us: they’re “talking down to you/ making fun of you”. And really, sometimes you can’t blame them.

P.S. – Tip your bartender and wait staff. Generously.

Websites:
www.theserviceindustry.net
Myspace