Les Savy Fav
Root for Ruin
French Kiss
Thankfully, Root For Ruin, Les Savy Fav’s new energy packed record, made it onto iTunes just in time for it to blast through open car windows as folks speed down the highway towards their favorites summer getaways. In my case, the Catskills, but not before I stopped by Gimmie Coffee in Williamsburg where one of the cute coffee boys heard it blaring out of my headphones as they hung around my neck.
“New Les Savy Fav,” I said, turning it up so we could both dance a little. He was into it, and so was I.
Les Savy Fav’s Root For Ruin is a grand beckoning, as embodied by the opening track “Apetites” whose thrashing bridge shouts: “Show us your teeth and show us your tits, and show us the scars from the shit that you did…” Or in the noisy Pixies-esque “Lips n Stuff” singing “Pretent with innocent, we’re just friends with benefits, we don’t even say we kiss, we just touch our lips…” The vocals on Root For Ruin are mixed with perfect clarity, bringing their innocently crude lyrics to the forefront, over loud electric guitars and heavy drums, with the occasional, and indie-rock essential, synthesizer.
The stand out track, “Sleepless in Silverlake,” offers an irresistible sway and bob of ambient melodic guitar, backed by a synthesizer, which begs to be blasted in a convertible Thunderbird while cruising down Wilshire Blvd. with your sunglasses on at 3:00AM. In the meantime, “High and Unhinged” will no doubt make it on to every loser freak high schooler’s Fall playlist, or mix CD, this season. As its chorus professes, “Out on the fringe, we get high and unhinged, and the outcasts are in, pressing skin onto skin”, it is destined to become the theme song for the kids who chain-smoke in the back of the parking lot, and have their eyes permanently rolled.
Root For Ruin embraces a raw high quality of production that is rare, which only a veteran but forward-thinking band such as Les Savy Fav can accomplish. It offers a satisfying and illustrious trajectory from 2007’s Let’s Stay Friends, as they polish their sound for the masses while holding on to their hard-art-core roots.
Release Date August 3, 2010
Track Listing
1. Appetites
2. Dirty Knails
3. Sleepless in Silverlake
4. Let’s Get Out of Here
5. Lips n’ Stuff
6. Poltergeist
7. High and Unhinged
8. Excess Engergies
9. Dear Crutches
10. Calm Down
11. Clear Spirits
