TV Dinner is the high-water mark of Mike Trask’s musical career. Which isn’t to say that his latest full-length album has shown us Trask’s final form—every time he has released an album, we’ve consistently had to ask ourselves if this new and bizarre manifestation is peak Trask and he continually shows us that there is still more behind the curtain—rather, he’s arrived exactly where he’s meant to be all this time: on vinyl.
Given the current trend of everything worthwhile once again making its way to vinyl, it shouldn’t seem like a massive surprise that TV Dinner should be treated to a release on our forefathers’ medium of choice. What’s more surprising is that it took Trask ten studio albums to get there.
This is a man who exists outside of time; a man who, even a decade and a half ago, came with a vocal rasp that sounded like he was going to get the warm crackle of vinyl one way or another, a man who has insisted on recording every instrument himself on tape at his MRC recording studio, a man who looks like he happily stepped into his grandfather’s wardrobe of leisure suits, a man whose entire existence screams “wood paneling.” The concept of releasing a Mike Trask album on Spotify is so antithetical to the concept of Mike Trask himself that it seems insulting. You may as well ask for Beethoven’s 9th in chiptune format.
TV Dinner is a natural expression of that. The album showcases Trask’s eclectic songwriting style, wrought with a healthy dose of nostalgia. Like its namesake, TV Dinner is a hodgepodge experience catering to a bygone era, offering bits and pieces of this and that, certainly not fancy but definitely a treat. While Trask cites influences like John Prince, Nick Lowe, and Paul McCartney, they are buried well and deep beneath Trasks’s own particular brand.
The album is a clear step towards the light following the release of his previous album, Derealization. TV Dinner comparatively sounds like Trask is enjoying himself, albeit in the form of near-psychedelic escapism. Much of the album describes scenarios that lean into the bizarre but generally as a matter of gaining perspective. “Yellow Sky” kicks the whole thing off with a lumbering twist of self-discovery, introducing TV Dinner as a loose concept album with all the technicolor hallmarks of Pepperland. He immediately follows that with “The Painter,” where Trask reflects on the process of an artist’s journey, and “My My, Bye Bye” offering a lesson in finding contentment, making for a rough trilogy.
For “Melted Wax,” Trask taps Julie Aubé and Katrine Noël of Les Hay Babies, for a bittersweet lesson in perspective, but stands out as a tasteful little breather on the album before diving right in on a wild take of John D. Loudermouth’s 1963 song “Bad News.”
That’s when things get weird. “All Digital” quickly tastes a turn for the dystopian, especially knowing Trask’s penchant for analog. If there was ever a song on TV Dinner to be compared to the place that “Infinite Content” holds on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, “All Digital,” with its sinister funk, is it. The immediate slide into “Welcome to the Bizzare,” sounding like Oasis and Dr. John go locked into a contract together performing lounge gigs, is perhaps a natural and inevitable evolution.
The final four songs on the album bounce back for a denouement riddled with nostalgia, gentle easing us from the atmospheric “Marshmallow Moon” towards the concluding track “Hazel Jones”, served up with a side of fiddle. This is Trask flexing his skills as a storyteller. Having liberated himself from the groove, the latter half of the album takes on a sweeter side—at least, the title track sounds sweet with lyrics like the vaguely familiar and comforting lines “I’ll lie beside you like a TV dinner, I’ll lie beside you like a Sunday roast.”
TV Dinner is a spectacular example of Mike Trask being Mike Trask. With his own unique style, he’s deftly turned more lyrics on their head and processed them through a whole kaleidoscope of shag carpeting and cathode-ray tubes. His poignancy is best served through the uncomplicated nature of his retro bent and his deeper grooves even more so. It’s only appropriate that we finally get to hear him on vinyl for the first time.