LES SAVY FAV inches

Les Savy Fav are bringing their own unique brand of live mayhem back to Australian shores soon. So here's a hint of what to expect...

Brooklyn’s Les Savy Fav have been wowing, scaring and baffling audiences for eight years now. During that time, besides staging surreal shows, they’ve released a series of quirky 7-inch singles. Inches brings these together onto one CD, b’sides and all. It’s a bizarre mixture of post-punk energy (which mostly works) and art-rock detours (which don’t).

‘Meet Me In The Dollar Bin’ is a strong opening gambit. Pulsing keyboards and guitar punch holes in your psyche as bonkers singer Tim Harrington threatens to jump in the crowd (something he’s noted for during gigs). ‘Hold On To Your Genre’ is less in your face but no less effective, as a paranoid Harrington trades vocals with his whispering alter ego.

It’s not long after this that the former art-school classmates begin noodling about on ‘Hello Halo, Goodbye Glands’. There’s knob-twiddling and mumbled vocals about petri dishes which is faintly amusing but essentially a musical dead-end. You start to get the sinking feeling that a spoken-word track can’t be far away and sure enough one arrives in the shape of ‘Reformat’ (a radio play set on a submarine). It’s not quite as infernal as Radiohead’s ‘Fitter Happier’ but you’ll be reaching for the “skip” button on your stereo in no time.

Inches certainly has curiosity value but whether it has any longevity is another matter entirely.

If Les Savy Fav were measured in inches: They’d claim that size didn’t matter.

By Andy McLean. Copyright held by author.

Article first published in The Brag, Sydney, 2004.

Inches is available through Popfrenzy Records.