Models – Cut Lunch 10″ VG+/G+

“Cut Lunch” by Models is a jagged, art-pop detour that captures the band at their most experimental and least compromising. Released in 1981 as a mini-album, it stands apart from their more polished new wave output, embracing a fractured, post-punk sensibility that’s more aligned with the avant-garde edge of Melbourne’s underground than the commercial charts.

The record feels like a collage—angular guitar lines, twitchy rhythms, and cryptic lyrics stitched together with a kind of nervy exuberance. There’s a sense of playful disorientation throughout, as if the band is deliberately subverting pop structures while still flirting with their hooks. Tracks like “Man o’ Action” and “Atlantic Romantic” are twitchy and taut, full of sonic detours and lyrical non sequiturs that evoke the surrealism of early Talking Heads or the art-damaged pulse of Pere Ubu.

What makes Cut Lunch compelling isn’t just its sonic palette, but its refusal to settle. It’s a snapshot of a band in flux—restless, cerebral, and unafraid to alienate. Even the production, handled by Tony Cohen, leans into the raw and the strange, amplifying the album’s sense of fragmentation and immediacy.