Jul 06 2009
Discovery – LP
Let me begin this review by saying that I’m not trying to be a cranky music critic or some sort of anachronistic Jay-Z type character, both of whom decry the state of current music. I’m on record as being a fan of the music of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot and the album that each band released in 2008 (Vampire Weekend and The Rhumb Line, respectively). But it’s going to take more than the ten sad little songs on LP for Rostam Batmanglij (VW’s keyboardist/producer) and Wes Miles (RRR’s vocals/rhythm guitar) to convince me that Discovery is anything more than a bunch of random cast-off tracks from those two bands that these two guys ran through Auto-tune in their spare time.
True, this is often what happens with musical side projects and super-groups – a bunch of friends from an assortment of other bands get together and work up a batch of songs that (typically) didn’t quite work with the primary outfits. But do these collaborations really every succeed or meet up with the quality of the original? No, they don’t, and the music world is left with songs that should be B-sides at best and forgotten practice room dalliances at worst.
All of the usual suspects in contemporary, blog-friendly indie-pop are presented in the most clichéd fashion possible. Sure, there are fun, dance-y beats, breathy tenor/falsetto vocals, bouncy synth-pop instrumentation, and breezy tempos a plenty, but the songs lack punch. There’s also the arrival of some overly cutesy R&B-styled flavors, but it proves to be a bit of a stretch for these guys. And yes, Auto-tune does kill even the most average of songs – unless you’re Andy Samberg, any time that indie rock flirts with T-Pain, everyone perishes.
In my estimation, LP is a rather garbled mess, as all of the typically bright pop colors that Batmanglij and Miles usually employ with their regular bands have been blended together into a boring brown. The distinct lowlights include “Can You Discover?” (a reconstituted Ra Ra Riot track), “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” (featuring Angel Deradoorian), “I Want You Back” (a Jackson Five cover), and “Slang Tang,” mostly because they all sound like a couple of guys were obviously quite bored one night and subsequently decided to have a bit of fun in the studio.
There’s a reason that the band has been promoting the songs “Orange Shirt, “Osaka Line Loop,” and “Swing Tree” on its website: if Discovery had simply released those three solid tracks as an EP, I would be much more supportive of this music. While it pains me to say it, though this mere studio affectation might be a quick one-off for these two talented songwriters, it also might be proof that the emperor that is hipster blog-rock might actually have no clothes.