Walter Mitty and his Makeshift Orchestra is most definitely a punk band, even though they only use acoustic instruments. When you’re at a basement show and the band consists of an acoustic guitarist with a kazoo and a drummer with a set made of a plastic Budweiser keg, a cowbell, and a tambourine, you wouldn’t expect broken windows and sweat drenched floors. But that’s just the kind of reaction Walter Mitty’s rowdy anthems induce. Decibels and distortion is replaced with clarity and catchiness, creating something that sounds like a more intimate version of Gaslight Anthem or the Thermals.
Overwhelmed and Underdressed is the third release from this young Portland-via-San Luis Obispo duo, and it’s the band’s mellowest album yet, but the disc is still swelling the with short track times, simple hooks and sing-a-long potential of any great punk album. The lyricism is so straightforward that it should be sappy, but there is such a clear sincerity to the delivery that it makes each track more like a late night conversation with an old confidant. There’s nothing too abstract about lines like “I’ve been from private school polos to sweet jail of Canada,” or “All my friends say this cartoon’s life expired. Some of them ran off chasing corporate grins, and some of them left me for oxycontin,” but these confessions are balanced out with a sense of humor about the spontaneity and absurdity of youth. The confusion felt by those who fall somewhere in the middle of the yuppie-punk continuum is mirrored in Walter Mitty’s music: a sentiment which often manages to be both melancholic and joyous.
You pick up Overwhelmed and Underdressed (and the previous two releases) over on Bandcamp.
— Will Mehigan