Archive for the ‘Times New Viking’ Category
Week In Review Aug 18 – Aug 24
Another week in the books and this week I’m happy to announce the additions of 3 new writers.
Ghalib shared his experience on Extermination Music Night – an event I eagerly want to go to now.
Carmen reviewed E.S.L.’s Eye Contact – impossible to search for this band. I love the Canadian content these guys are pitching in with.
Speak of Canadian, Adam (writes a blog The Edge 102.1) reviewed Kathleen’s Turner Overdrive E.P (too long so I’m lazy to write it/copy and paste it).
Other reviews:
The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot* I gave it a 5/5 meaning it’s likely on my best of the year list.
Oceans Will Rise by The Stills
Asking For Flowers by Kathleen Edwards
Memory Drawings by The Drift
Rip It Off by Times New Viking
The Devil, You + Me by The Notwist
Feel Good Hits of A Nuclear Winter by Laurel Collective
Fast Times at Barrington High by The Academy Is…
Other:
Adrian covers the Cutting Edge Music Fest in the first of a two part series.
Some blogosphere commentary:
Please freakin stop with the Bloc Party hype. Even if you hate the bloc party or like them, I’m sick of tired about hearing about their latest single or whatever fucking opinion you have on their new album. At this point, I hope their album receives a 5.0 something from Pitchfork so the blogs can talk about some more meaningful music.
Okkervil River plans to have videos promoting their latest album. They have some performances the latest and probably the awesomemest is with AC Newman of the New Pornos taking over Jon Meiburg’s duties on vocals in a star studded duet that makes me drool (and potentially wet – I keep that secret) with Wil Sheff playing the new single Lost Coastlines. Watch below if you hate navigating.
TI released a new song. Didn’t listen to it.
The Walkmen’s You & Me scored an 8.5 from P4K. You may be seeing a review from us though probably not from me (I haven’t listen to their past albums and it wouldn’t be right).
An uneventful week for me. I struggled with sleeping issues and my knee is going to take another 6 weeks to heal (10 TOTAL) as I can’t do any sports that involves any twisting. That blows.
Times New Viking – Rip It Off Review
Some labels are bigger than others and for a band wanting to advance beyond their humble origins, the option to leapfrog from label to label up the musical food chain while evolving into a more streamlined, fully-functional hit making music machine must be a lot more tempting than spending an eternity repeatedly regurgitating your sound and being stuck in the back of a tour bus that never ever stops. But let us thank the holy ghost of Elvis in his Las Vegas heaven that this isn’t the desired route of every band on this overcrowded planet. Although, some bands still move to other more shiny record labels and if you weren’t paying attention you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Rip it Off is Times New Viking’s third album and their first release on the Matador label, the grooming den of a multitude of pristine indie outfits. So has the loud distorted guitar rattle of Times New Viking been replaced with an anti-hiss big studio glossy veneer? Well, erm… no. There are no sounds here that indicate this recording was done with any of the gee-wiz-bang trickery of modern recording techniques. “Teen Drama” starts the album with chunky riffs, wonky keyboards and hoarse voices and each song arrives in the same format, barely lasting for more than two or three minutes, like short bursts of teenage adrenaline that sound as if they were recorded live with a portable tape recorder. On Rip it Off, Times New Viking are as raucous and dishevelled as they’ve always been and even seem to have produced a record that isn’t too dissimilar to their previous release on a much smaller label.
Such apparent methods of minimal production and a din of a punky racket may seem prosaic and disingenuous, when considering the band’s newfound resources, but such considerations are missing the point. This album may be a little overlong and hardly an original concept as a whole, but individual songs like “Drop-Out” and “Come Together” clang around in your head in a very pleasurable way, even “End of All Things” with its quiet acoustic section is surprising and seems almost unsettling amongst an ever-present ridiculous clatter. The songs may be ridiculous (in a good way) but hidden underneath the layers of dirty distortion there are great little yelping colourful pop numbers, indie nursery rhymes of a sort that instantly conjure up bright Day-Glo colours in your head, that’s if you hear your music in colour.
Teen Drama by Times New Viking
