Single: Les Savy Fav - Patty Lee/The Sweat Descends (Wichita)

What at first appears a curious choice for a double-header (pairing one of the highlights of last year's Let's Stay Friends with inarguably their finest moment) seems more obvious with the information that LSF are about to reissue their singles compilation, Inches over here in Blighty.

'Patty Lee' is an effortlessly swinging singalong popper that acts as a marker for how Tim Harrington and co. have matured as songwriters, but the real draw here is 'The Sweat Descends', which is a signifier for just how stupendously good Les Savy Fav can be when firing on all cylinders. A raging, supremely danceable monolith, 'The Sweat Descends' is a bloody, red in tooth and claw battle between erudite American indie and balls-out, heart-pumping, muscular modern rock. It's not unlike TV On The Radio facing down Queens Of The Stone Age at high noon. The outcome is too close to call but the bout is bracing and beautiful. So, it's a four for 'Patty Lee', but for 'The Sweat Descends' it's a resounding...

5/5

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3453&band=1962

Interview: Les Savy Fav

It seems fitting that terminal nearly-men and ‘band’s band’, Les Savy Fav should hit Manchester the very same night as their more-successful friends, LCD Soundsystem. LSF singer and likeable eccentric, Tim Harrington jokes, “I feel bad they’re on at the same time as us. We’re gonna send some people over as it’s gonna be hard for them, with us playing across the way.”

Tim is busily working away on a customised poster for tonight’s show throughout the interview. Although being knee-deep in cut-out letters (spelling out the words “Man Chest Hair”), he manages to be erudite and charming, while drummer Harrison Haynes is able to pick up the slack when Harrington’s concentration starts to wander. Much minutiae is covered (TV comedy, the vertiginous effects of the dressing room wall covering) before the talk moves into more serious territory.

“There was a period (a couple of years ago) when I thought we weren’t allowed to be a band”, Tim muses, before Harrison interjects, “I think we’re more broken up now than we were then”. “That’s true”, laughs Tim, “We’re like a ghost band”.

Pushed on how he thinks the landscape has changed over the years, Tim reflects, “Since we started as a band… it’s gelled up to be a kind of functioning industry. It’s now like, ‘My job is I’m in a band’ and that never occurred to us. We always had other jobs outside the band”. Harrison then notes that “Bands we had a camaraderie with now seem to have become… legitimised”.

Tim goes on to talk about the overriding influence of the internet on today’s music; “There’s more connoisseurship. More people have access to more music, which is cool, but there’s not as much of that kind of misunderstanding when you live in a town where there’s no good record shops and there’s no good music”.

Tim seems perturbed at the changes in how people are turned on to music today, having seen it evolve from “checking out the thank-you list in the liner notes and just buying them all, hoping that some of them would be good”, to “downloading a song off MySpace and deciding whether you like them or not”. He qualifies by saying “It’s great… for some kinds of musicians that years ago would have been in a punk, underground type of world, whereas now they can actually think of making a living out of it”.

There’s a refreshingly old-school sentiment at the heart of Les Savy Fav that could be misconceived as reverse-snobbery were it not for Harrington’s super-enthused, thoughtful manner. When ruminating on the instant fame some bands have thrust upon them these days, he comes to the conclusion that bands “need time to suck”, before breaking the whole of the music industry’s band nursery down into three types of band:

“There’s band that comes out of nowhere that people go crazy for, but it turns out that all they have is three songs and they suck. Then there’s band that comes out of nowhere and it turns out that they actually are a really great band, they just didn’t have to fuck around for five years before they got any attention. That’s awesome for them.

“Then there’s the band that suck at first and would’ve gotten awesome, but never get the chance because everyone saw their ugly first baby-steps and will have then forgotten about them and then you’re fucked.

“In the past, every city had, like, 50 shitty bands who’d play for each other and no-one got to hear of them outside of that. But it was like Darwinism, slowly but surely they’d be allowed to evolve into something that was really solid. Now it’s like, if you don’t get a hole-in-one, then you’re screwed”.

Les Savy Fav never had that hole-in-one but they’re making up for it now with arguably the strongest album of their career. The epithet on the band’s website reads “Missing out on cashing in for over a decade”, but if it doesn’t happen for them now, something tells me the band won’t be bothered too much, as Tim notes, “All the bands I loved failed. There’s something about being as good a band as you can be but not having to be professional. That’s why (we called the album) Let’s Stay Friends. The friendly thing is really critical to us. We can’t really picture the band any other way”.

Printed in the December/January issue of High Voltage magazine.

Album: Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends (Wichita)

Les Savy Fav are almost the living definition of the term 'cult band'. They're revered in certain circles for their fearsome live reputation and fitfully tremendous recorded output. Let's Stay Friends ends a six year hiatus from the album format for the band and comes three years after one of the most-loved (by those who've heard it) and most-criminally-ignored singles compilations in living memory, 2004's Inches, an album that both helped and hindered the band in more ways than one.

The biggest fault that Inches highlighted for many is that LSF are a great singles band that have always struggled with the confines of a studio album. The problem with Les Savy Fav – and it's a good problem to have – is that they have that keen an understanding of the dynamics of the short form that they seem to lose scope when it comes to the bigger picture.

Therefore on Let's Stay Friends, as is the case with the rest of their albums, you get great songs, neighboured by samey filler. There are signs of growth however, in songs such as the ominous 'Brace Yourself' which shows that they are learning a thing or two about pacing. Then there's forgettable pop-punk numbers like 'Scotchgard The Credit Card' and 'The Year Before The Year 2000', which undo the band's good work elsewhere on the record.

Whilst it can only be a good thing to have a band of Les Savy Fav's calibre back making albums again, you can't help but think that this is yet another missed opportunity.

http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=3119&band=1962

N.B.: This grew on me.