Lenola - The Electric Tickle EP
(File 13)
Southern New Jersey deserves its sour reputation. It really is the lowest of the low of American suburbia. Driving through Southern Jersey is like driving through the same town over and over again, filled with wide expanses of highway and lame strip malls full of cookie-cutter stores. Driving out of Philadelphia into New Jersey, you don't lose the claustrophobia you usually feel when leaving a big city, because the monotony and blandness of Southern Jersey can be much more imposing than any set of skyscrapers or narrow city streets.
You can drive for miles and miles into South Jersey and never really notice much of a change. Eventually you reach the North-South interstate, on one side is the same suburbia you have seen for the past 15 or 20 miles, and on the other side is empty wasteland--I am tempted to say country, but this is more swamp than farmland. If you pick the right fork in the road, you eventually end up in Moorestown on this interstate border between bland suburbia and nothing.
Moorestown is a fairly big community, and driving through it, you can almost see the town it used to be: a row of stores beside the street, less congested back roads, more open spaces. However, as more and more people moved out of the city, Moorestown has become more and more like the bland suburbs that proceed it on the road leaving Philadelphia. More and more of the town is simply centered around the highways. More and more of it seems like just another section of the void that is South Jersey.
Back in the day, Moorestown used to be called Lenola. Lenola is a band from the town that used to be called Lenola. When listening to Lenola, you can kind of see the band they used to be: younger, more experimental, more willing to mix sounds from other bands they like to just see what they can make up. There seems to be a parallel between the invasion of suburbia from Philadelphia into Moorestown with the invasion of Philly's "Psychedelphia" sound into the sound of Lenola. No longer do they try new things. No longer do they make music to simply see what new things they can do. Instead, they just try to sound "Psychedelphia." In their current sound, all they are is Asteroid No. 5.
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