Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends Album Review

Les Savy Fav
Let's Stay Friends
Album Review

From the mildly humorous song titles (Raging In The Plague Age, Scotchguard The Credit Card) to the yelping vocals that range from melodic to caustic, Les Savy Fav are a force to be reckoned with. Their songs pound wrecklessly, relentlessly: haunting, reverbed guitar lines give way to gentle howling, waveforms get messed up in your ear canal and anger gives way to jollity gives way to angst.
At times the comic-punk element to the music grates a little: it feels like the whole world has regressed six or seven years in the space of about two or three minutes. But just at the last minute, they pull it back, pull the rabbit you least expected out of the hat you had no idea they had.

Live, I'll bet my bottom dollar (hell, it's hardly worth anything these days anyway) that Les Savy Fav are a four-man epiletic fit. Listening to Let's Stay Friends whilst staring at a bleached-out laptop screen is a highly inadequate experience. Even the gentle-by-comparison 'Comes&Goes' is an edge-of-the-seat affair, a twitchy lullaby, waiting to get out of its cage.

In summary: a party album for party people. You've even got your comedown songs lined up and ready for you.

Hayley Avron