Les Savy Fav - Go Forth
(Frenchkiss)
Go Forth and I have been with one another for over a month, and I’m happy to report that the Fav have lived up to the high expectations Rome (Written Upside Down) set in front of them. While not as consistently brilliant as that little EP, Go Forth has enough moments of brilliance to strongly recommend it.
The album starts out with a building static fuzz that’s snapped by singer Tim Harrington screaming, "What we don’t know could fill a truck/what we don’t know cannot hurt us," accompanied by some blistering distortion freakout. “Tragic Monsters," the opening track, talks about... well, monsters, locked in a basement and crying. There is a double meaning, but I’m far too lazy to try and figure it out. The song closes out with a refrain of the opening line, with Tim singing, "what we don’t know can’t hurt us yet." Good? You’d better fucking believe it.
The second track, "Reprobate’s Resume," starts off much like "Wake Up!" from The Cat and the Cobra, with sparse drums and voice highlighted by minimal guitar. This song is a highlight if only for the crazy rap-sing in the middle: "cheap sex with a discount broker/cop’s walky-talky squawks breaker-breaker/we’ve got to take her down to the station/she said that that broker broke her." It goes on like this! This is followed by a couple of the albums weaker tracks, the funky "Crawling Can Be Beautiful" and shrieking "Disco Drive." Good, but, you know, nothing special.
However, by track six the album picks up considerably. The three minute "Daily Dares" begins with very soothing spacey guitar and bass, before busting loose completely in the last forty-five seconds. It’s the album's most intense minute, with Tim singing, "The pen in the pocket/the fall down the stairs/the knife in the socket/these are our daily dares," along with other lines about "turning friends to air" and breaking up. Crazy. The morose "One to Three," perhaps the saddest Fav song since "Titan" off of The Cat and Cobra, follows "Daily Dares," and it’s perhaps my favourite track on the album.
But perhaps not! After the completely uninspired "Pills" (come on, Tim), a serious highlight comes along. "Adoptuction," which features minty lines such as "I dreamed I was kidnapped/by a guy with a mustache and a chick with an eyepatch/who thought they could trade me back for some good cash," is one of those bizarre story songs that’s still incredibly catchy. I’ve found myself singing it often, and you will too, if you happen to hear it even once. It also features a haunting guitar solo and Tim’s most impassioned vocal delivery on the album. Wonderful.
Go Forth and I have been with one another for over a month, and I don’t think a day has gone by when I haven’t at least listened to one song on it. This album is worth your time and money to pursue; it’s a happy, angry, and melancholy album that’s got some of the best songs that Les Savy Fav have ever produced, and it’s easily one of the ten best albums to be released this year.
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