Release : Times New Viking - present The Paisley Reich
Artist : Times New Viking
Album : present The Paisley Reich
Genre : Indie
Source : CDDA
Label : Siltbreeze
URL :
Date : 02-13-2007
Encoder : LAME 3.97 / -V2 --vbr-new
Quality : 190kbps 44100 kHz Joint Stereo
Tracks : 15
Time : 28:07 min
Size : 38.42 MB
1 Imagine Dead John Lennon 1:36
2 Devo & Wire 1:49
3 Little Amps 1:37
4 New Times, New Hope 2:10
5 Slay Atlantis 1:00
6 Teenagelust! 2:02
7 Ladders 1:22
8 Love Your Daughters 3:35
9 Allegory Gets Me Hot 0:56
10 +++ 0:12
11 Bad Looks 1:15
12 Common Cold 1:35
13 Lover's Lane 2:20
14 Let Your Hair Grow Long 3:34
15 Hiding In Machines 3:04
Indie Rock doesn't have an Alan Greenspan to make corrections when the scene
loses its focus. There's no suit in a secluded office, sitting under stacks of
charts and reports, pushing and pulling the scene to ensure its health. This
fact has become painfully obvious as during the past decade, the word indie has
lost all of its meaning. Once the word stood for independent or indie rock, but
these days, the word is more likely to mean indifferent or inoffensive. Think
about it for a moment. Think about the bands that built this scene. We're
talking about Black Flag, Husker Du, The Replacements, Dinosaur, Jr, Mission of
Burma, and Sonic Youth. Now contrast that list with the who's who of popular
indie bands today: The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens, The
Decemberists, and The Arcade Fire. For every band like TV on The Radio, who are
pushing the artistic envelope, there are five, no strike that, fifteen bands who
are indie, indifferent, and inoffensive. The scene is in desperate need of a
corrective force.
Into this scene walks Times New Viking, a decidedly reactionary, brash, lo-fi
band from Columbus, Ohio. If punk saved us from prog, and indie saved us from
hair metal, then Times New Viking are here to save us from ourselves.
The first lo-fi movement, of the late Eighties, and early Nineties, led by bands
like Elliott Smith, Sebadoh, Pavement, and Guided by Voices, was part necessity,
and part aesthetics. The early recordings were made in bedrooms and basements on
any recording equipment they could get their hands on, and in the process they
were making a statement against clean, well-produced recordings that lacked
feeling. These days, when technology can put a polish on bedroom recordings,
lo-fi is an artistic choice.
The legend of Times New Viking states that Siltbreeze released their first
album, Dig Yourself, after receiving an anonymous cassette tape with the words
"Times New Viking", scribbled on its shell. Present The Paisley Reich, is their
second release on Siltbreeze, and their last for them before they make the leap
to Matador. Times New Viking Present The Paisley Reich is everything that modern
music isn't. The songs crack, and click, start and stop with little notice, and
some songs play out as if they're missing entire pieces. There's little, or no
bass on the recordings, and the melodies are buried beneath buzzing guitars and
whirling keys. They are tinny, fractured, imperfect, and most importantly,
provocative and powerful.
With a title, Present The Paisley Recih, alluding to fascism, much of the album
deals with feelings of fear, isolation, and the failure of peace. "Imagine Dead
John Lennon" begins with a marching drum beat sounding like it was pounded out
on dented, tin garbage can lids, before yielding to a sonic guitar blast, and
howls of "Thank you for believing/Imagine dead John Lennon drop out/And begin to
build a useless heaven."
"New Times, New Hope" contrasts the song's optimistic title with the realities
of war in our present age, at one point borrowing the line "Four more dead in
Ohio," from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's painful account of the Kent State
National Guard shootings of the Seventies. Similarly, the innocently titled,
"Love Your Daughters," is another tale tarnished by modern times. The steady
pounding of the drums, the droning keys, and static heavy guitar hide lines like
"Dynamite seems our only purpose/Getting high only makes us nervous," and "Deep
themes that keep us idle/To trite to the point of tragic/Our Lives are oh so
fantastic/long live our friend the machine gun/Fuck books and love your
daughters." "Teenage Lust" could be a simple tale of young love and separation
when it opens, "I don't wanna die in the city alone/The sun doesn't always shine
through a telephone." Yet, when you consider the context of the album, then add
in those disorienting keys and shrapnel sharp guitars, you can easily imagine
the conversation taking place between Columbus and Baghdad, where the culture of
fear has grown to envelop lives both home and abroad.
Times New Viking presents The Paisley Reich works on so many levels. It can be
as simple as a lo-fi recording railing against technology and modern music.
Wonderfully, once you pay close attention to the words and tones in this record,
it becomes so much more. It's a reactionary recording that consciously uses an
old aesthetic to examine lessons that we should have already learned in love,
art, and war.