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Rating:
Being added to the list of reviewers just a few days ago, I couldn't refrain from writing a few passionate lines in praise of one of my favorite bands (which also shape my Nickname...) of recent years. The New York quartet has reached the peak of its musical and artistic ability with this album (perhaps they'll prove me wrong with their next work, I hope...). Les Savy Fav is the classic band that grew up on repeated listens to the Washington scene (Dischord Docet), trying, however, completing the maturation process, to pull away and explore more "Pop" terrains (while maintaining in the lyrics a certain protest matrix typical of the Washington D.C. scene).
The result is this album with a sure emotional impact capturing the four Brooklyn guys in a state of compositional grace. "Trajic Monsters," happily suspended between Pixies and Fugazi, opens the dance and "Crawling Can Be Beautiful" is indeed a Disco-Punk track especially for that doubling of electronic drums, the same goes for the subsequent "Disco Drive," which with those female choruses and the guitar sound, still recalls the more playfully Pop tracks of the Boston quartet (we'll never stop saying how significant their influence has been on the entire Underground). The dialogue between drums and Synth with a roaring bass at the beginning of "The Slip" completes with the others already mentioned the danceable triad of "Go Forth"; in this unprecedented guise, Les Savy Fav achieves the best results, in some passages of disarming splendor.
Some subsequent tracks perhaps indulge too much in self-indulgence: how many times have we heard the arpeggios of "Adoption" or the initial bass line of "No Sleeves"? This does not mean the tracks are bland; indeed, the New-Wave echoes (certain Talking Heads) in "No Sleeves" literally give wings to the song, making it perhaps the most compelling anthem of this album. Tim Harrington's voice doesn't adequately support the cadences of the final "Bloom On Demand," and it's a real shame because the piece deserved a better vocal interpretation since musically it was truly a heart-stopper suspended between devolution and Bostonian goblins (again...) with a monastic Synth at the end. A collection of 7" is coming out in these days titled "Inches," do you think it's worth missing?
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Tragic Monsters (03:12)
What we don't know can fill a truck
What we don't know cannot hurt us
Well, is that so?
We're hard to destruct
Well, is that so?
Why do we get crushed?
Prepare the isolation chamber
I'm going in
And all the people there will wonder
"Can we go with him?"
Tell me now you're only kidding
When you say "We'll pass away"
Tell me now this yarn we're spinning
Doesn't end on judgement day
All tragic monsters are crying for themselves
In attics and in basements
In cages and prison cells
Wishing that the citizen's myth they could dispel
Until you see the faces
In the limestone on the pipe
Don't tell the tragic monsters what loneliness is like
And is there any wonder
That some misfits lose their mind?
Left to fumble asunder
In the world deaf, dumb, and blind
And can they sense our justice
When they commit their crime?
How can they abide our justice?
They're already doing time
What we don't know (x7)
Can't hurt us yet
02 Reprobate's Resumé (03:14)
Blessed be the doctor
Blessed be the nurse.
Blessed be the coachman
who put me in the hearse.
Blessed be the blessings and
blessed be the curse.
Rattled from the sediment
old bones around the settlement.
Tell who passed out the medicine
the dose was much too strong.
He goes to bed bereft and berated
and rests his head in the hands of
the over rated.
Sweating bullets in the faculty lounge,
sensing treason they're not waiting around;
On the first bus out of the town
they're playing movies that they've already seen.
The jewelry advances as the gums recede,
the devil goes out dancing on the angels preceived needs,
Please go easy on me.
Cheap sex with a dicount broker-
Cop's walkie-talkie squawks breaker-breaker.
"We got to take her down to the station
she says that that broker broke her off."
Read the text at the ticker tape parade-
The subtext is that someone's getting paid off.
Check the checks at the ticker tape parade-
pay stubs of the people who've been laid off.
Insurance can't cover what the world exposed-
Open nerves.
Touching toes to stretch,
the A.C. made us retch.
Can you conceive of
working for the
emperor's new clothes?
Please go easy on me.
04 Disco Drive (04:09)
Look-look-looking in the pink
While living in the red
Pissing in the sink-sink-sink
Too drunk to find the head
Beg-beg-begging for the black
Make me rich or make me dead
I want a little pick me up
So I won't stumble down tonight
Considering staying alive
Hitchhiking on the Disco Drive
Sometimes jobs turn to vacations
but always I must earn
Waiting for standing ovations
For filing my tax returns
Searching for zippers
but finding only seams
The seamstress for strippers
Must suspects my dirty peeking schemes*
I want a little pick me up
So I wont stumble down tonight
Considering staying alive
Wish I could only Disco Drive
A man can only do his best
I’m skipping steps and I’m taking breaths
Hold your horses, cool your jets
You can’t make me be finished yet
Don’t trust the poets, they want to get paid
They’re playing their trade to the art of getting laid
Don’t trust the prophets, their visions are fudged
They’re buying our houses while selling us floods
The hours will get you
The owls will get you
When I was a swear word
The hours we shot-gunned
The hours will get you
The hours will get you
The owls will get you
The hours will get you
10 No Sleeves (04:07)
the singer of the band
has been encased
in a circuit board formed
from arsenic and old lace.
the piano has been dropped
a c-note hits the cop
so he would turn away
while we're cleaning up the slop.
this is the bishop's finger
this is the bishop's hand
onto Jesus' body
the people place demands.
they're pointing with their pistols
while we're reaching for the sky
the soundtrack of their lives
is an eye for an eye...
hail hail the talk show
cocked after cocktails
i lied and i lied...
god save the techno
the sequencers dont know
when it died, when it died...
edison put the gun in our hands
the black bear put
the muzzle to its muzzle.
the dogwood didnt care
but the maple was troubled.
trademark, this is a trademark
this move was trademarked in 1883.
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