Tim Harrington has finally made it okay to be a fat punk-rock freak. Cool. God does have a plan for the foodies! Now I can ditch my diet and resume freebasing Ho-Hos.
Tim Harrington, of course, is the charismatic frontman for Les Savy Fav ("Fucking punk rock" in French), and his stage antics include leading the audience in jumping jacks and hurling the mic over the rafters, then balancing it on the tip of his finger. Apparently this foodie in a tracksuit is the Ghost of Punk Rock Present, his chubby fingers irreverently spinning an entire genre on its head.
The latest release from Fav is Inches, a concept album dreamed up in 1996. It features singles spanning Fav's entire career, starting from the present and slowing going back in time eight years to the band's first single, "Rodeo." A testament to the band's goodness is that the first track, the explanatory "Meet Me in the Dollar Bin," matches the last in tightness, intensity, and quality. These guys friggin' rock.
"We got old/but we got good," Harrington tells us on the opening track, as he recounts the trials and tribulations of Savy Fav's long career. A band that may not have met with resounding commercial success, Savy Fav has managed to add a few pages to the gospel of post punk without selling out or fading into obscurity. What's most noticeable upon first listen are the signature dueling banjos type-guitar work of Seth Jabour and Keith Butler, so clean-sounding and melodic, especially evident on "The Sweat Descends." Another reviewer compared them to U2's Edge, and that seems apt. I like minimalist guitars, but layering two guitars sparsely plucking away is a step beyond brilliance.
I hear reverberations of the Clash on "One Way Window"; Les Savy Fav wears its influences on its sleeve, but never pretends to do otherwise. Where Savy Fav may fall flat for some are the dramatic readings based around a sinking submarine in "Reformat (Live)." These mini-acts aren't necessarily bad, but they do slow the pace of what is otherwise a hard-driving compilation album.
Les Savy Fav is a Brooklyn outfit, some hometown boys who've been churning out some great post-punk for eight years. I only very recently discovered this band, which begs the question: Where the hell have I been?! Their next show is over on London, but I will anxiously be awaiting their next Williamsburg gig, jogging around the block in my tracksuit and eating Ho-Hos in the meantime. That's so punk rock. |