Image of Times New Viking by James Avallone
#14 Rip It Off by Times New Viking (Matador Records)
My apologies to Times New Viking but today I want to start by saying - yay! - we have completed our first month of daily posting at Wires and Waves.
Now on to business. Times New Viking don't want you to know that they're a pop band. I'm not sure why - maybe it has something to do with them being art school students. Maybe it's because they weren't a pop band at first but have become one by mistake. And, to be fair, they make it hard to tell that they are writing songs that, in some cases, borderline on bubblegum pop. For one thing, they bury all their songs under an almost impenetrable layer of noise. They are one of those bands that makes you doubt that your audio equipment is working properly and, once you've decided it's supposed to sound like that, you end up trying to explain to everyone who gets in your car that it's supposed to sound like that. The guitar, drums, and vocals are all overdriven (overdrived?) to the point of fuzzy distortion, and the mix is purposefully muddy.
And it's just loud. The back cover of Rip It Off says "Please play loud" but that may be a joke of some kind because it's impossible to not play this album loud. For one thing, the way it is mixed super-hot and compressed into oblivion, it still sounds loud on MUTE. Also, there's no way to hear the hooks and nice subtle touches buried in the noise without cranking it up - at low volume, this album might as well be 31 minutes of white noise. They do other things to distract you from their pop songs - like giving their songs names more appropriate for art installations. "Relevant: Now". "Allegory Gets Me Hot". "Fashion to Talk About the Moon". And then there's the "contains explicit lyrics" on the front cover - there's no way that this album has enough profanity on it to require that label. They put that there themselves!
But then they put this in the liner notes of the album: "Times New Viking play pop songs." Of course they do! If they didn't, I wouldn't be listening. I've tried to get into real noise (or "noize") music, and it doesn't do anything for me - it has to be noise-pop. And Rip It Off is my favorite noise-pop record of the year. Keyboardist Beth Murphy and singing drummer Adam Elliott bring the pop hooks and joyous choruses on this record, and guitarist Jared Phillips is an underrated guitarist (supposedly had no experience when they started the band) - his riffs and leads emerge from the cacophony from time to time to great effect. Rip It Off does a good job of making the noise tolerable over the album's half-hour length, varying the approach and throwing in calmer songs like "DROP-OUT" and "Another Day" to provide a break from the constant bludgeoning attack.
"The Early '80s" sums up what Times New Viking is all about pretty well. It opens Side 2 of the album - how cute, they're pretending that records still have sides - with a nice,clear guitar riff. And then the noise crashes in. Beth and Adam sing in unison, and a keyboard part provides a stabilizing low hum in the right channel. A minute and a half later they're done - but just what were they singing? I think it's a love song - this first line is, "I wanted to buy you flowers from the new thirteen colonies, but you came alive you came alive YOU CAME ALIVE in the early eighties!" It's a bouncy pop song about being in love, but it's trying to disguise itself as something else. Nice try - we're on to you.
"The Early '80s" by Times New Viking
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