The Tunnel

The Tunnel
Fathoms Deep
(Glorious Alchemical)

The Tunnel, out of San Francisco, swaggers through a doomed and noir-ish landscape of abandoned taverns and spectral red light districts. Armed with just the basics — guitar, drums, a few keyboards and a bass — its three members transform California’s normally sunny surf rock into something dank and infected, chords hanging in the miasma, riffs clanking chains in damp, moldering basements. The band is said to have first convened at a punk/goth club called Death Rock Booty Call, founders Pat Crawford and Jeff Wagner drawn together by a shared love of The Birthday Party. Not surprisingly, there’s a good bit of Nick Cave’s theater of the macabre here, along with shreds of The Cramps’ campy horror movies, Lydia Lunch’s pulp fiction, and Bauhaus’ morbid dramas.

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