Equation #44: Times New Viking

Simulcast on Three Imaginary Girls




Times New Viking

Times New Viking
Rip it Off
Matador, 2008

“No, it’s not your stereo. It’s supposed to sound like that.”

Refreshing is a term that can mean a lot of things. As a child I remember being confused and slightly nauseated by beer commercials’ claim of “refreshment” from drinking a Rocky Mountain cold bottle of suds, and to a lesser extent the model’s choice of wearing a bikini beneath a snow parka while happily skiing the bunny slopes. When you’re nine years old a contest between a bright red, glistening GI Joe cup full of Kool Aid and a glass of foamy, foul smelling Hamm’s really is no contest at all. I’d gulp the sweet stuff any day and finish off with the obligatory breathless *gulp-aahhhhhhhh* as I wiped a pink stain onto the back of my wrist. Refreshing means different things to different people; a politician who seems to speak without prepared statements can be refreshing, a cool breeze up the leg of your gym shorts as you jog across hot pavement can be refreshing, and, yes, a tall pint of cold, foamy beer can be refreshing.

In the world of music “refreshing” can be just as subjective a modifier as “indie”, “prolific” and “relevant” when describing a band or sound. For instance, some eternally retro geeks out there consider the “DIY” or “Basement Tape” movement to be a breath of fresh air, as fresh as a breath from a musty old box of the past can be at any rate. They hail it as a return to form, a renaissance of the true independent nature of music; a simpler, purer era before ProTools and Autotune and horseless carriages. Ok, perhaps not that pure. Not that I’m in favor of every shaky-kneed upstart band being able to gloss their way into the mainstream with a few mouse clicks and knob turns, but it also seems presumptuous to make a stand against that rung skipping by refusing to record on anything more sophisticated than your uncle’s dusty old reel-to-reel unit. I mean, we get it: music was better on vinyl and it makes you seem so unique to have to special order the tubes for your amp because they stopped making them after Nixon left the White House.

Right, so what exactly has crawled up my ass to die? Well, Times New Viking’s new album Rip It Off to be specific, an album that’s name begs for a snarky comment but refuses to let me go there. After releasing two albums on the Slitbreeze label Times New Viking makes their big-boy debut on Matador and while a larger label might bring with it a larger production budget Columbus’ TNV has eschewed the payola and remained true to their ear-splittingly DIY roots. Rip It Off features track after track of crackle, hiss, fuzz and yelp layered like thick, thick frosting over a tasty cake of surprisingly solid pop songs. And that’s what may be the most infuriating thing about this album; that it’s not bad. That’s right, despite the vitriol I spewed above about bands making awfully recorded music just for the sake of hitting that “barely tolerable” bull’s-eye, TNV actually make great music. You just can’t tell through all the static. The tracks are short, about 2 minutes on average, and feel peppy and rambunctious, which is good, because if they were relying on the power of lyrics or nuance they definitely picked the wrong medium. No, the fuzz is the correct path and they use it masterfully, molding it into it’s own instrument, infecting your attention to the extent that during the last 30 seconds of “The End of All Things” when the fuzz abruptly stops leaving a muffled acoustic guitar and some sing-a-long vocals the sudden vacuum is as jarring as the start of the record. I can’t predict what a live Times New Viking show would sound and feel like, if they’re able to recreate the foot thick wall of static they put up on the album live I can imagine it would feel a bit like having the inside of your skull sand-blasted, but in an oddly good way.

While it certainly isn’t for everyone, or even a fraction of everyone, there’s still a select node of people out there that will pop in this album and either:
a. Turn it up to drive roaches, rodents, neighbors and low flying aircraft from their area.
b. Make claims about its mysteriously soothing properties as they sit in a bath chain smoking clove cigarettes.
c. Make tapes of it for everyone they know and gush to them about how “it’ll change the way you hear music, man”. or..
d. Have sex to it.

Those freaky freaks aside, there’s something to be said about just giving in to the power of the squelch. TNV have used whatever time they haven’t spent buying new speaker cones refining their songs and melodies. The result is a curiously infectious album of music that is both Guided-by-Voices catchy and as confusing and off beat as Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead. Each track is like a tiny meal of Pop Rocks and cola: it’s fizzy, crunchy, and sweet and in the back of your mind you wonder if you’re actually doing some kind of harm to yourself.

Equation #43: Statehood

Statehood

I had the great privilege of seeing Washington D.C.’s legends of lunacy The Dismemberment Plan three short months before their untimely end in 2003, shoulder to shoulder with a few hundred overheated young hipster twenty-somethings bouncing and shaking at the tiny, sweaty, claustrophobic club Meow Meow in Portland. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that twitchy, often undanceably obscure group, but the looming mood of impending band dismemberment put my senses in sharp focus; I had to absorb every note, I strained to drink in each counter-rhythm and cheeky lyric, I reached The Buzz and The Buzz reached back. I count it as one of my all-time favorite shows and anyone there could probably offer a similar take.

As any Plan Fan will tell you, the true magic of the band was not only in Travis Morrison’s tempered, frantic jabbering about girls and jobs and the end of the world, but the sheer immutable tightness that was Dismemberment Plan’s rhythm section; bassist Eric Axelson and drummer Joe Easley functioned almost as one mind, diving in and out of time signatures and synching up beats as though driven by Midi control. So when Statehood’s album graced my desk with a note reading “Dismemberment Plan Guys” I couldn’t get the disc out fast enough. While the initial motive was simply to hear what new sounds Axelson and Easley had conjured up there was an element of fear and hesitation. “What if it sucks? What if it really really sucks?” I thought, after all, post-brake-up bands could go either way (Read Audioslave).

I must say out of the gate I recognized the scampering sprint of Axelson’s bassline, as well as the plywood-tight snap of Easley’s well worn snare, but coming off Dismemberment Plan primers like “Girl O’clock” and “The Other Side” Statehood’s opening volley “A Story’s End” came off bracingly square, and not the un-hip kind of square, just, you know, 1-2-3-4 square. Not to say that the track lacked energy, in fact singer Clark Sabine’s throat burning howls and guitarist Leigh Thompson’s scaffolding arpeggios work so well with the rhythm section you’d assume Statehood had been playing the D.C. post-punk scene as long as anyone. So I decided to set aside my assumptions and, rightfully, look at this band as a bunch of guys I’d never heard of making an album of music that I’m supposed to form a thoughtful, intelligent and unbiased opinion of. Luckily by the second track, the mosh-worthy “Giants”, I was in the Statehood state of mind. As the album progresses the ferocity of Sabine’s pleading vocals rarely lets up, the way this album grows is in the increasing complexity of the music; each track adds another layer to Thompson’s calculated and surgically precise guitar additions. The way he effortlessly moves from a sputtering jangle )”End the Moderation”, “Transfixed”) to cascading shimmer (“Every Single Question”, “Sense of Home”) brings to mind the style of Bloc Party’s Russell Lissack, in fact Statehood as a whole could function as a fair American equivalent to that London band.

It really speaks to the talent and commitment of these four guys, each a component of a previous band, to come together and produce an album of this caliber just because they felt the material needed to be created. I suppose that’s a major motive for many bands, but it really seems like Statehood overcame some kind of obstacle by releasing Lies and Rhetoric. Adding something to a scene that has such established roots and well known founders, to keep it alive by pulling together some Frankenband and saying “There’s still relevance here!” shows remarkable drive and genuine skill.

Or they could be a bunch of dudes who just want to play in a rock band. Who knows?