I've never listed to a VW record before. Knowing who they were, they seemed too twee and sweet to me. Imagine an Iron Maiden fan in 1982 picking up a Haircut 100 album. Doesn't fit. ...And the leader's name is "Ezra" for fuck's sake. He makes John Mayer look like Lemmy. But I admit that they made a pretty impressive showing at Lollapalooza this year, so I'm putting on my deck shoes, tying my sweater behind my neck and giving them a spin."Step" is a good example. A slow beat with some harpsichord ramblings would generally be entirely too ridiculous to add to my collection. Especially when sir Ezra kicks over a stack of encyclopedias and reads random words with a calm white-reggae-rap over it. But something about it works. I'm sure it would work more for me if those same lyrics were being cockneyed over by Alex Turner, but I can still take it.
Down the line, "Hudson" is another one that totally surprised me. A morbid matter-of-fact gothic march which is mourning something, painting a hell-scape war-torn landscape while not explaining anything concretely. Still- put me in the right mood.
Other than those, only a couple of other tracks matched my expectations from the live show in terms of excitement. "Diane Young" and "Finger Back" are hyper-kinetic blasts of energy. But other than the break of of fun, there wouldn't be a lot for me to connect to. Especially the latter, where the vocal rap is not anymore decipherable than it is interesting.
The remainder of the album is filled with some mid-tempos and rich-white-kid-polyrhythms (see:"Ya Hey") that betray their Paul Simon influence without having ever gotten their hands dirty in city soil, much less African. I can see the modern vampires benefiting from experience. They have a collective head to find something interesting, even if they don't quite perform it yet. (2.5 of 5 stars)
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