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Sounding like a cross between Goo-era Sonic Youth and Beat Happening, Le Pepes is at times pleasantly listenable - “Renting a Space Station” - and at other times surprisingly violent (see “Fragile”). The 13 songs found on All Fun Things End were recorded between 1996 and 1998, the group having disbanded officially in 1999. The laid-back (lo-fi if you must) approach Le Pepes took to committing the sound to tape is apparent from the start: At the end of album opener “Bigwheel Trickery,” a voice can be heard saying “Uh, make sure you sing into the mic.” Sometimes this approach works in Le Pepes' favor. On “Another J in the Letter Chain,” the ba-ba-ba sing-along chorus and poppy drums make Le Pepes sound like the best basement band ever. In contrast, on songs like “My Spaceship Flies on the Rocket Survival Course,” the vocals and drums sound as if they were recorded in a closet lined with lead. “Nice Guy Comes in Last” is the strongest song here, though what is being shouted can’t be made out through the din. Is it “I’m your number-one band” or “I’m your number-one Dad”? “Tickle Tragedy” finds the band sans drums, exposing a “softer” side. “Super Duper Rad” is a sugar-fueled number, with the title being the main refrain sung over beach-movie-meets-spy-movie guitar. “Comfortable Silence” is quite a bit darker; featuring heavily distorted lead vocals broken up by melodic girl vocals on the chorus. Album closer “Touchdown for the Visitors Side" sounds curiously like Modest Mouse, though it’s really not that surprising, given the mish mash of influences sprinkled throughout All Fun Things End. If the band had stuck around longer, perhaps it could have gotten focused and made a truly great album (Le Pepes released several cassettes throughout the short career). Even considering Le Pepes was operating under the lo-fi aesthetic, some of the songs on All Fun Things End sound like they were never meant to see the light of day. However, when they’re good, they’re really good, and All Fun Things End highlights a band that held quite a bit of promise. - Beren, 3/22/04
Punk Planet #61 Le Pepes - All Fun Things End (Kittridge) Le Pepes broke up six years ago, but just released this record of 13 full-blown indie-pop songs. The songs have boy/girl vocals, plenty of fuzzy guitars and lo-fi noise. Sometimes, it sounds like Sonic Youth or any band from Chapel Hill. (DI)
Left of the Dial Le Pepes: All Fun Things End [Kittridge] "If you are in a band and you record all of your material in a studio and get the head of Shelflife Records audio/production to master a handful of your songs at Nonstop Sound, can you really consider yourself to be a "lo-fi" group while keeping a straight face? Apparently, the boys and girl of the defunct Le Pepes were fine with making music that featured intentionally poor sound recording techniques along with sparing use of glaze during the mastering process, which brings us to All Fun Things Must End. Those who were around during the Los Angeles-based band's five-year stint will welcome this posthumous release of odds and ends. Unfortunately, those who were not present then or those who don't care to look further than the Beat Happening and Guided By Voices exhaustive catalog to consider themselves knowledgeable about this brand of indie-rock won't think this compilation to be as valuable. On the other hand, this release is quite handy when one finds him or herself to be an aficionado of the indie-rock lo-fi subgenre. It is a shame that this band did not continue to record, but perhaps that will be its saving grace. Almost every track on this compilation features muffled vocals and distorted guitars that remain pristine – but not in terms of slick production and shiny mastering techniques. Even songs like "Renting a Space Station" and "Another J in the Train," both of which were mastered by Jon Chaikin, sound undefiled, though they were in fact tampered with inside a studio. Those two songs, along with "Touchdown for the Visitor's Side" are the more polished tracks here, but they are far from "cleaned-up" if they are to be compared to other so-called "classic lo-fi" recordings. This release serves as a testament to those who don't think that the only meaning behind "lo-fi" is utilizing a four-track recording device and being overly melancholic lyrically. The main attraction in All Fun Things End is the title itself. Bands break up and get back together with each passing day, but the ones who will really be remembered are the ones who know when to call it quits. Le Pepes remain viable because virtually every song here is bursting with wit and quirkiness to the point where this album should not be passed up by anyone who appreciates Pavement and Sebadoh for those same reasons."
Skratch
LE PEPES The first thing I thought when I heard this record was, "Wow, they recorded this on a boom box inside of someone's butt." That's what gives Le PepEs their charm, though. The almost little-kid enthusiasm and mistakes give this album its brilliance. The songs are well written, and the brother/sister harmonies are endearing. You know how THE MUPPET SHOW eventually had the spin-off THE MUPPET BABIES? Well, if Sonic Youth were Sonic Youth Babies, I think Le PepEs would sound a lot like what they would sound like. Le PepEs are from California, and they broke up five years ago - so who knows why their record just came out now?! Talk about bad timing. Come on, guys! -chad
Le Pepes – All Fun Things End (2003, Kittridge Records) Imagine you’re on a road trip, heading north from Chapel Hill, NC up to Richmond, VA. You’re heading in the direction toward your destination and somehow you get stuck somewhere between the math-rock highway and the early 90’s punk interstate. You stop for gas and break down on the side of the road in a little town called musical obscurity. You make it your home and call yourselves Le Pepes. Le Pepes hail from the Los Angeles area, ironically, and broke out when indie rock was in its prime, circa 1996-1998. Formed by a brother-sister team who recruited two more fellow musicians, their career was short, but altogether sonically sweet. “All Fun Things End” is a compilation of these years, wrapped up in a 13-track album of crunchy guitars and jumpy vocals and scowls. The first track, “Bigwheel Trickery,” is a blend of Matt Suggs (Butterglory) deep tenor, Action Patrol screeches, and Blatz female vox screams. It incorporates all of these elements into one solid package. The entire album is fast paced, bouncy, and art-rock mastery at its best. You feel like you’re there with them, in the garage rocking out in the corner. One would almost call this a pop-punk album, if it weren’t for the lyrics and vocalization, which give it an intelligent edge. Track 12, “Comfortable Silence” could easily be mistaken for early Sonic Youth, with voice box yelling and off-kilter guitar. The entire album has tight marching drums and solid bass lines. Vocalist Jerry Zinn’s range of silly nonsensicals, serious dark lyrics, and verging on angry yelps makes everything blend together for a great ride. Le Pepes combine keyboard, tambourine, and “knickknacks” as they call it to create the ultimate indie experience. Another standout track, “Renting a Space Station,” will have you rocking in your cubicle. It incorporates stop-and-go drums, keys, and fluttering from pogo-happy to solemn-stillness and back again, then screeching to a complete stop. Le Pepes may have had a short run, but they’ve certainly left their mark in the music world.
Nacho Cheese & Anarchy
Le Pepes All Fun Things End (Kitteridge Records)
Lo-Fi Junk le pepEs - "all fun things end" - cd - nitty gritty pop band that is akin to waffel fries when compared to the rest of the fried potato scene. muffled guitar wreck, and clatter and yelling. cymbal crunch and sustain. fun quirk and strum oddity. glory days were founded in shithole pratice space...and then pressed onto compact disk. i will file under le pepEs on cd shelf.
Losing Today
LE PEPES Their name alone ushers a promise that what my lie within will have more than its quotient share of hide and seek bashful twee pop, though from the welcoming bars of the opening cut ‘Bigwheel Trickery’ your thoughts are soon put to rest leaving you to think otherwise. v ‘All fun things end’ is something of a retrospective, rather more, call it a timely reminder of a band long since gone who in their brief, but important life, brought to bear three hopeful cassettes (‘And the idiot wins’; ‘Musique pour faire l’amour’ which appears here in full and ‘Jupiter moon menace’) between 1996 and 1998 on a well informed audience before things like marriages and paying the rent got in the way. ‘All fun things end’ serves up 13 short, sweet, sharp slabs of three chord discordant lo-fi pop, what this lot may lack in presentation or suffer at the hands of musical limitations they more than certainly make up in ear pricking attentive tuneage. Buried beneath the frazzled crude chord changes tiny attrition based prickling punk melodies are dutifully dispersed with boy / girl delivery, its that raw kind of sound that was so prevalent with American indie rock at the time as though recalling Polvo in an argument with Th’Faith Healers over redecorating the Modern Lovers back catalogue in their own unique way but secretly really wanting to be the Pixies, Le Pepes perch themselves on the fence between tweedom and noise nik popsters, at times there’s a shambolic menace to their art as shown on the proto Sonic Youth howler ‘Second place finish’ at others just wired as proven on the awesomely potent razor like gems ‘the day I saved the planet’ and the austere fractured friction wrap of ‘My spaceship flies on the rocketship survival course’. Best cut of the collection is the naively skewed marriage of feisty amateurism and wholesome pop carnage on ‘Ixat’ and the wilful unruliness exposed on the warped Fall-esque ‘Comfortable Silence’, all in all well deserving of a listen or five but as crooked as a curly path all the same.
TLCHICKEN.COM: "all fun things end" cd review by pepe the chihuahua
Le Pepes All Fun Things End (CD)
Five dollars gives you all the music Le PepEs ever recorded. The LA-based group existed from 1996 to 1998, and they rocked the garage good. "The Day I Saved the Planet" has frenzied boy-girl vocals from Jerry and sister Kerri, while "Ixat" sounds like the Vaselines, or Beat Happening with a little more pep. All of Le PePes' songs burn with at least some wild abandon, but never with all of anything. It's the apparent incompleteness of their music that makes them difficult for fickle listeners to swallow -- a thirty-second clip offers little indication of this band's style or abilities. Depending on where the CD player's laser lands, you might hear anything -- even just screeching. Like Six Cents and Natalie, they reward you with a few wonderfully structured songs, performed with true energy and manic intensity, then ask you to reward them in return with a bit of good will. You'll have to trust me that the good will is of the earned sort.
Le Pepes All Fun Things End (CD) Back in the day, oh circa 1993-1998, it was still acceptable for a band to traffick in the sweet but sometimes ghoulish sounds of lo-fi. Guided By Voices, Pavement, The Grifters, and Lou Barlow's "doh"-bands blew the doors open in magazines like Rolling Stone and SPIN with their scratchy ass homespun records. All of the sudden, everyone with a four track realized it was possible to get mainstream attention. Then the bottom fell out, or so everyone will tell you. I get nostalgic for those days, which is why I enjoyed Le Pepes posthumous release All Fun Things End. These are the collected recordings of a band that I wish I had seen play live during their short 3 year tenure in the L.A. area in the mid 90s. Yes, musical ground is not being broken by any stretch of the imagination, but still there is a lot to like on this album. First, I need to say that I was and still am an enormous Butterglory fan and Le Pepes' first track "Bigwheel Trickery" channels them dead on, right down to Matt Suggs and Debbie Vander Wall's amazing vocal timbres. "Fragile" is a departure from that sound, leaning more toward mayhem and distortion and sounding somewhat like the monotonic rantings on early Sonic Youth. I really liked the fun and bouncy "The Day I Saved The Planet". The beginning of "Tickle Tragedy" sounds like Calvin Johnson has infiltrated the Pepes with his deep wobbly baritone. "Super Duper Rad" sounds almost power pop, while "Comfortable Silence" sounds at times like Thurston Moore's solo work, especially in the verses. The production values of some of my favorite early Swirlies albums come to mind on all of these tracks. A word of warning: you're not going to enjoy this album if you can't look past the occasional tape phasing in the mixes. But it's all good... sometimes I feel like I'm listening to some of my favorite mixes on my old walkman. So has lo-fi been relegated to the no-no bin nowadays? That's up to you to decide, but if you're willing to wiggle, Le Pepes will give you a fair shot at worming your way back through the heyday of old fashioned lo-fi rock. You say it's easy, but you're wrong. - review by BY (7.11.03)
Le Pepes - "All Fun Things End" cd (Kittridge) This is the only album from this L.A. group that existed from '96-'98. Compiled five years after the band broke up, it sounds really dated. Hell, these recordings probably would've sounded dated back then! They're best described as a mix of Butterglory (right down to the boy/girl vocals) and Guv'ner: simple lo-fi indie rock with a fair amount of skronk and screaming which sometimes works (the chorus of "Bigwheel Trickery", for example) and sometimes doesn't ("Fragile" is impossible to listen to all the way through). Sometimes, they forego the noise altogether (and just sound like an edgy Butterglory), and give us excellent songs like "Ixat" and "Another J In The Letter Chain". Though not anything new or different, the record is still a lot of fun - even if you aren't nostalgic of mid 90s American indie rock! MTQ=9/13
Kissing the Cat
Le Pepes - All Fun Things End (Kittridge) |