:: Track Listing

1. Teen Drama
2. (My Head)
3. Rip Allegory
4. The Wait
5. Drop-Out
6. Come Together
7. Faces On Fire
8. Relevant: Now
9. The Early '80s
10. Mean God
11. Another Day
12. The Apt.
13. Off The Wall
14. End Of All Things
15. Times New Viking Vs. Yo La Tengo
16. Post Teen Drama

:: Record Review

Times New Viking

Rip It Off
(Matador; 2008)

Rating: 80%
Combined Rating: 78%


Is this record really a piece of shit?

The stage directions say that this question should be weighed over, mulled on, considered. And maybe it should. It would be pretty cool, in any case, to come up with some science for shit -- a sort of tower diagram, maybe, with big red labels and the album Make Believe (2005) somewhere lonely at the top. We could talk about smells. The answer would come in haiku.

But that answer's pretty obvious, anyway: Rip It Off is all kinds of cool. The skulk-track that says otherwise needs to really bone-up and re-listen: because, I mean, ok, they’re noisy! I get why the prospect of a "bad-sounding" record isn’t for everyone, just like I get how some people will hear this record and will incontrovertibly decide it’s just that: "bad-sounding." Fact is, though, that by now the aesthetic isn’t just totally obvious, it’s totally beside the point. If you "get" these guys -- and you should, they’re awesome -- you get why this record and these songs couldn’t sound any other way. Even imagining a nu-indie production job is weird and sort of useless. So much of Times New Viking’s sound is so mutually interfering that it almost starts to self-police, anyway. The contours already exist. This is a fucking pop record.

And maybe if we’re out of earshot we can even hear each other say it: that this record, above all, is fun. Fun! Not "art-damaged" or designed-to-annoy: Rip It Off is the best indie-pop set since the last Times New Viking record, which was the best indie-pop set since the Pipettes, which was the best pop set since Futuresex (2006). It’s totally unabashed about its commercial viability. These dudes shit-gazed themselves onto Matador. Fuck the rules: the album sells itself out loud.

What this may have done to their revolution, I’m not so sure. The bulk of Rip It Off intimates at issues adolescent and vertiginous> It also fairly explodes with confidence, so much so that it’s hard to lose interest, especially with things being so well-sequenced. The loping and anarcho guitar buzz hangs like heavy smog over “Teen Drama” but wraps itself into hard inflation by the time shit’s actually “Come Together.” With its colossal stillness and scatterpins of feedback, “Relevant: Now” comes off as loud angry footnotes. They may have blown a fuse once or twice. And past all this is the loose pattern of bands heard and digested, not just Guided by Voices, but the Beatles and Michael Jackson and Billy Joel. Those snagged track titles and sudden choruses are just another way to tell us to quit talking. The fact that this is their Matador debut is by all means just another slither of bokkel for the hype track. The ultimate pull of Rip It Off is catch-all. It’s the most convincing straight sale I’ve heard in a long time.

It exudes this statement marketability from the first take. Like their last two records, and maybe more so, the actual songs here are as much small miracles in mixing as they are tuneful and bizarre. The bit where Beth Murphy’s vocal overwhelms its reality of rote noise absolutely makes “The Apt.” and “Drop Out”‘s sing-song into a John Hughes comedown is all the better for its not being bludgeoned into the acetate. The moment when the levels on “(My Head)” drop out so Jared Philips’ guitar can just tongue itself may be the best thing ever. Doing it three times is only courteous.

Which is all to say that although this isn’t the quintessential Times New Viking record -- Dig Yourself (2005), c’mon -- it’s the record that offers the best envelope for their sound: it screeches loud, but it’s always setting itself within the groove. It has some dud tracks, but you’d never notice. It’s un-watermarked and for the moment. The feeling that, yeah, kids everywhere -- you, even -- could do this only palms into the little indie role-play vibe that makes this band so endearing.

And if more than a few kids g-string this sound to a pining clutter and we get the inevitable slew of sallow and insipid blends -- bands, each one more comically un-tutored than the last and bands that don’t seem quite broke enough and bands whose "brokenness" is slipshod and moneyed and bands who, y’know, just couldn’t give a fuck -- if that happens, then, yeah, we could start using "shit" adjectivally. Because there are maybe a hundred thousand ways this sound can turn into annoying bunk, and not everyone has ears as big as I do. The fact that Times New Viking has now put out three records that skip the pot-holes is definitely cool. What’s really cool, though is that the records are great. Alan Baban :: 6 February 2008 |