It’s at all times ironic listening to Tim Harrington sing pleas for human connection after a profession spent exemplifying the very qualities most probably to drive others away. The megaphone-voiced frontman of Les Savy Fav quills the band’s art-punk with brash quantity and hectoring sarcasm. On the band’s legendarily rambunctious reside reveals, he sacrifices security and dignity alike for the sake of an unforgettable spectacle. He’s as naturally gifted a showman as punk singers come, and one of many final guys you’d assume is all that involved with whether or not or not he’s relationship materials.
Nonetheless, as Les Savy Fav have aged into an establishment, Harrington has more and more uncovered his softer facet, writing usually in regards to the problem of sustaining shut private relationships. It may be odd, listening to the identical wildman famed for stripping right down to a Speedo on stage and scaling the tallest object within reach earnestly sing strains like, “It’s laborious to let love in after we’re so petrified of getting harm” on the group’s sixth album OUI, LSF (on a music titled “Anyone Wants a Hug,” at that).
Launched after a 14-year recording hiatus throughout which the group sometimes toured however largely centered on their day jobs, together with bassist Syd Butler and guitarist Seth Jabour’s gigs anchoring the unlikely home band for Late Night time with Seth Meyers, OUI, LSF continues the sentimental streak that ran via its predecessor, Root for Damage. On the tender “Daybreak Patrol,” Harrington finds solace within the reassuring contact of his companion’s hand. In its somber counterpart “Don’t Thoughts Me,” he croons about love that’s pale into mere tolerance over time. It’s essentially the most bare, brazenly weepy ballad he’s ever tried.
One may argue that Harrington’s rising sincerity has made Les Savy Fav a better-rounded band. It’s actually given them a wider vary of moods. But as with Root for Damage, OUI, LSF can’t utterly shake the sense that its comedown songs are taking over house that might have been stuffed by bangers. Fortunately, this band can nonetheless rage convincingly when it counts: The album opens with an absolute strain cooker, “Guzzle Blood,” which funnels their heated art-rock via the Prodigy’s five-alarm noise manufacturing facility, all bleating squall and blaring horns. “Void Moon” and “Oi! Division” are each economical pit-starters, showcases for searing riffs and Harrington’s frontman-as-Russian-roulette volatility.
At occasions, the maturity flatters. One in all Harrington’s periodic forays into Penthouse Discussion board territory, “Limo Scene,” calls again to the lurid intercourse of “The Equestrian,” however this time amid all of the touching and pheromones, the element he lingers on is an easy gesture of consent and affirmation, a whispered “I’m into this.” The album’s stabs at youthful irreverence are much less sleek. With its hokey appropriations of previous LL Cool J and Usher lyrics, “Legendary Tippers” pushes the band into stale dad-joke territory. It’s a nod to an earlier, sillier period of the band, a previous they’ll’t absolutely let go of despite the fact that they’ve outgrown it.
Like their peer Marnie Stern, who returned from a equally lengthy studio hiatus final yr with an album that picked up precisely the place the final one left off, Les Savy Fav aren’t humoring any notions of reinvention. Whenever you’ve acquired a sound this singular, this established, this irreplicable, there’s no disgrace in letting it journey. Nonetheless, given how time has at all times intrigued Les Savy Fav—their important 2004 compilation Inches flaunted their evolution by accumulating seven years of singles in reverse chronological order —it’s just a little disappointing that the newest album doesn’t have extra to indicate for the passage of a lot of it. Twice the span that Inches documented has elapsed since Root for Damage, but OUI, LSF performs extra like a continuation than a brand new chapter.
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