Iamsound, 2008
Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2009
Price: $1 (originally $14)
Behold! Another reinvention of the girl group. This time from blah Brooklyn and with lots of synthesizers! But at $1, I realized that this is worth having, for a while at least. I first heard these guys (or girls, I should say), on the excellent Living Bridge compilation put out by Rare Book Room records. “Who IS this band?” I asked myself, as if I were a record executive, the giant cigar falling onto my guts, the ashes staining my pants held up by suspenders. If Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais didn't have such girlish vocals, I would probably hate that, but there's something endearing about the way they sing. Sometimes it comes off as a couple of high school girls doing a cover of an MIA song for Youtube (like the single, “Chrome's On It”). Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio produces, and you can tell (in a good way). In fact, his production makes this pretty listenable. Granted, I have grown fairly tired of Brooklyn, the epicenter of what has become the most annoying thing about music: fashion-tronica. Angular hair cuts, glitchy beats, PERFECT clothes, loft parties. Maybe I'm just jealous or maybe I think the excess tends to get in the way of music. Not to say Brooklyn hasn't churned out some decent bands, and then there's the Hold Steady and the national, yet though they operate out of there, they're both from the midwest. There is some shit that I just don't understand. It just seems too cool for me to listen to, to disaffected and cold and it sounds boring to me, which means that I'm surely out of the loop, right? This record has some moments, like opener “So Fine,” but mostly it feels tossed off. Have I mentioned that it's boring? Like, listen to “In Your Line,” a song in which absolutely nothing happens and once it's over you've completely forgotten what you've just heard. Most of the record is like that. Just repetitive, half-baked melodies repeated over yawning beats and synth swells.
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