The man above is a mad-man. He is truly among the craziest people I have ever had the great pleasure of being in the prescence of. This man, this god of rock, is named Tim Harrington and he is the frontman for Les Savy Fav. Les Savy Fav is the subject of today's download. I had a tough time trying to decide which of their albums to put up today. Eventually I'll get around to putting other ones up, but as the first, shall we say, installment I present their debut epic The Cat and the Cobra. I guess one could draw comparisons to the Pixies or Fugazi because, yes, they are tight and poppish while still raw and, to use a cliche and uneffective descriptive term, punk-rock. Fact of the matter is, they sound like a lot of past bands, but goddam if it never feels like it. Every Les Savy Fav song is a breath of fresh-air via a wind-tunnel. They are weird, they are (sort-of) accessible, and this is a crowning moment. Tim Harrington is the Jackie Mason or Mitch Hedburg, he doles out his lyrics through lightning fast one-liners. Looking at the words as a whole entity is pointless, it's much more fulfilling and entertaining to go a line at a time. "We've Got Boxes" and "Who Rocks the Party?" are classic face melting LSF, while "The Orchard" and "Roadside Memorial" slow things down in a very classy fashion through two genuinely beautiful songs. "Dishonest Don Pt.2" weilds one of my all time LSF moments, and it isn't even from their song. Les Savy Fav have a wonderful habit of using other pop song's lyrics (i.e. "Papa Don't Preach" lyrics in "Knowing how the World Works") in their own songs, but in this case they just went ahead and sampled the original. Around 45 seconds into the song they use a line from a not so obscure song to great effect.
I've put a great amount of attention on the front man of this band, when the backing band presents itself as one of the most talented in rock. Constantly tight, even when they seem to be at their wildest, they are among the destructive guitar and rhythym section in American rock and roll. When I saw them live they present themselves as the straight-men to Tim Harrington's "just escaped from the local kookoo house" antics. While he's humping some girl on the floor of the club in a leotard, they're up on stage sounding absolutely amazing.
So here they are! They're loud, they're angry, they're raucous, they posess one of the greatest live shows, and the are unfortunately on a bit of a hiatus. They are LES SAVY FAV!
Les Savy Fav - The Cat and the Cobra | Two
When I have more time tomorrow, aka my day off, I'll upload Inches, LSF's exhaustively catchy 7" collection/art project. But this album should hold you until then. So get on your crazed rock face and enjoy.
1 comment:
Its Jackie Mason, unless Tim Harrington is solving crimes while he is telling one liners.
Post a Comment