Ultra-belated mini-reviews!

In a sad attempt to defibrillate this nearly dead blog, I will post a couple Observer articles I've had sitting on the back-burner for a little while now. The first of these is a little set of mini-reviews I wrote a few months just for the hell of it. Look out, peoples! I get scathing and negative for once! Whoahhhhhh. And on top of that, the very day this article hit the racks, Pitchfork gave Girls' Album a 9.1 comparable to my 4 and a half stars. Not that anyone really gives a shit, but maybe I can be a tastemaker too! Look out, Chicago and/or Williamsburg!

Be glad they didn't use anything from the "Lust for Life" video...

Girls – Album

Any hype-driven band is subsequently met with its fair share of skeptics, and more often than not, the skeptics win and the hype flutters from group to group. Every now and then, a young band manages to live past the hype, and judging from the strengths of this debut, the androgynously named Girls (a band consisting of two guys who start the album by singing, “I wish I had a boyfriend”) should be sticking around for a while.

The album is easily one of the best works of modern indie pop released this year, and its range of emotion and relentless attention to pop hooks should endear it to an audience far beyond the hipster set. Songs like “Morning Light” and “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” are up-tempo bursts of fuzzy rock while “Laura” and “Darling” admirably channel sunshiny, infectious ‘60s pop. The album’s centerpiece, however, the lofty “Hellhole Ratrace,” is an affecting torch song for the wistful pop geek inside all (or at least most) of us.

I have nothing to say about this album cover.

Times New Viking – Born Again Revisited

For what it’s worth, the current resurgence of scuzzy, no-budget garage rock has become a reputable force in the current independent rock scene, and Columbus trio Times New Viking have been one of this aesthetic’s most visible bands. Regrettably, the band hardly moves beyond this aesthetic, producing a sound that amounts to little more than all-style, no-substance, and Born Again Revisited barely follows through on the band’s promise of 25% higher fidelity than their first Matador release, Rip It Off.

Even so, there are glimpses of true songwriting talent hidden underneath the feedback, and tracks like the relatively understated “Those Days” and the powerful rushes of “No Time, No Hope” and “Hustler, Psycho, Son” justify much of the hype that persistently surrounds the band. It’s a shame then that the rest of the album uses an avoidable lo-fi sound to bury these song snippets and prevent whatever hooks (which may or may not actually exist) from flourishing. That may be part of the point, but even the experimental, filler tracks on Guided By Voices’ best albums were catchy.

Tetris!

Lou Barlow – Goodnight Unknown

Lou Barlow is one of the most unquestionably prolific songwriters in independent music history, having released massive albums of material under several different monikers. Apart from his contributions to the Dinosaur Jr. reunion, he’s been working steadily under his own name, casting off much of the rough, lo-fi sounds that he helped revolutionize and showing proof of graceful aging.

It is impressive that after so much material, Barlow is still able to craft unique melodies, and strong tracks like opener “Sharing,” “Don’t Apologize” and “One Machine, One Long Flight” bolster a collection of fine tunes. Perhaps even more notable is the manner in which Barlow, one-third of one of the loudest bands in alternative music history and one of the men most responsible for the noisy lo-fi movement, is able to pen songs like the Elliott Smith-esque “Thinking…” and love song “The One I Call” and still come out sounding more earnest than most balladeers.

Okay, that's all for now. Hopefully soon I'll post another old article and then put together a final list of the top albums and songs of the year! Hopefully...