TIMES NEW VIKING - Rip It Off

The "romantic nihilism", lo-fi & noise-pop, of Times New Viking lands at Matador, and it does so with an album that, sadly, fails to live up to the promise set by their first two records, among which that “Dig Yourself” which revealed them to us two and a half years ago still stands out for its cohesion and inspiration.

“Rip It Off” is, then, a step back towards "normalization", towards a sound that today seems almost afraid to bare its teeth, to fully explore all the emotional and explosive possibilities of that blend of roughness (noise) and candor (pop) that elsewhere had delighted us, and not a little. So the noise-pop that worships light and the white heat of underground velvet (“Teen Drama”), while still coming across as exalted and uninhibited - like youth basking in the sun (“My Head”) - this time feels a bit too lopsided and out of control (“Rip Allegory”), even if, elsewhere, it still shows no aversion to genuine abrasion (“The Wait”).

Deep down, when you think about it, this is nothing more than the skeleton of rock'n'roll disfigured by noise ("End Of All Things"), sometimes carefree ("Drop-Out"), bold ("Come Together"), noisy and bittersweet ("Faces On Fire"). And yet, deliberately and stubbornly lo-fi as they are, they should, we warn them, demand more of themselves, really let rip, rather than rummage through the trunk of the past (their own!) without even much conviction. Pleasant enough, but no more than that, is the Tucker-esque pulse of "Mean God", the psychedelically poppy streak of "Another Day", the obsessive sloppiness of "The Apt." and the impenetrable garage-brut of "Off The Wall".

The fact is it never really takes off, not even with imagination in power, not even in the face-off against Yo La Tengo on the second-to-last track. And you're left empty-handed, unless you're blindly devoted to the cause.

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31/12/2007