I feel like I have to get this post out, mostly because I am floating in a pool of dissappointment. Granted this was my most anticpated album of the year, so I admit my expectations were, well, honestly unmeetable. Especially given the new material that I heard at the Sunset Junction Streetfair at the end of last summer was uncompelling. At that show they pulled some crazy switcharoo where the bassist and guitarist decided to exchange instruments, but apparently not talent. I excused that performance as some kind of drunken charade. Still I had faith they could pull it off. But the new album really doesn’t get much cleaner than the sound at that show, the production intentionally emphasizing a more relaxed, less polished, rawer sound that in the end simply comes across feeling somewhat unfinished. What the album lacks more than anything else is a sense of direction or the kind of cohesivness galvanized by emotive song writing on previous albums. While rawness of the sound, the raspy crooon of Hamilton Leithauser, the emphatic drumming by Matt Barrick is consistently there, the brooding conflicted confessions like “The Rat” or “Rue the Day” are no where to be found. Instead we get atmospherically correct, but unprovoking tracks like “Lost in Boston” which has fallen from the cathartic howls of tracks like “Little House of Savages” to describing drunken escades at Fleet Week.
Bracketing the album are two songs with the most potential, suggesting entirely different directions. “Louisana” is festive, pushing the bands sound into new territory that draws more on a folky twangy southern sound than on their well established garage/indie rock base. However, no other track picks up on this initial direction and we get muddy mood pieces until the final song. Here the song writing matches their expressive sound, the slow churning bass line reminiscent of “We’ve Been Had” or “That’s the Punchline,” reviving for a second my too high hopes for the album. Satisfaction was soon quashed when topo pointed out that this was a Mazarin cover.
I think I’ll let this one go by.
: Complaints :
Besides a quick ‘I told you so,’ I can only say that I agree wholeheartedly. To me, its as if they decided to remake “Little House Of Savages” 8 times without ever developing any of the tracks into something with a strong or memorable melody. To this they added 2 very poor attempts at emulating Minor Threat, a cover, and then “Brandy Alexander;” a song they couldn’t be bothered to finish. There is nothing as captivating as “Wake Up,” nothing as endearing as “Rue The Day,” and nothing as inventive as “Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone.”
It sounds like an album written by committee, where all the instruments are jammed in on top of each other, and nobody ever refined or edited them in to actually work together. I don’t think they are incapable of writing good songs anymore, I just think they don’t feel like trying to anymore. Well, I don’t feel like listening to it anymore, either.
ouch. i haven’t listended to the album yet, but heard a lot of the new songs on NPRs live set from a couple of weeks ago. The older songs definitely carried the show.
well, I already listened the album, I think is a little bit dificult to listen, but the first track “Louisiana” is a perfect comunion of instruments the part of the trumpets is awesome !!!, I dont had listen this combination of sounds in any indie band, this song have a high level of performance…
To the other side, the rest of the album … I dont know what happen!!, they had a great start ,,,
And the last song “another one goes by” is my favorite, remains me to the other songs of the last albums, like “we’ve been had”, “What’s in it for me “, that Melancholy that I love in this band and in the music in general,
It seems like they have to diferents albums, the first and the last songs have all the power and the other have nothing, no body, no felling, nothing, what a shame.
This band is really good, I dont have to say it, they have a lot of potential they shows it with “Louisiana”, but I dont know, may be they need a little bit of commitment with their material, I really don´t know the real intention of the band, but this album only have a begining and an end, nothing less, may be they put that songs intentionally, but they forgot that we can skip the others !!!.
well, this is the opinion of an indie fan, and a lover of music, especially rock music.
P.D. Viva Mexico !!! jijijijiji