Times New Viking aren't for the faint of ear. The trio from Ohio has no time for subtle recording tricks like EQ, proper levels, or fidelity. No doubt their recording budget hovered around the low two figures with most of that going toward beverages. The resulting album is a 30-minute blast of over-driven organ, squawking guitars, rattling drums, and pushed-to-distortion vocals that sound painful when played loud, and like a far-off hum when played quietly. Despite all this, Rip It Off is an incredibly good record. Maybe because of it, even. Beneath all the noise are songs with pretty melodies, huge hooks, and singalong choruses. Take the fuzz off of "Drop-Out" and you have a TV commercial, clean up "Another Day" and you have a girl group classic, fix the levels on "Off the Wall" and you have (possibly) a sweet love song. There is most definitely a pop band at the bottom of that layer of hissing sludge. Not that we're talking about an Archies record here, there is plenty of raw emotion on display ("Rip Allegory," "The Apt."), songs that have some complexity in their structure and delivery ("Relevant: Now"), and a huge dose of art, from the typewritten text on the cover down to the unique use of punctuation in the song titles. People might compare them to bands of the lo-fi era like Eric's Trip or early Smog, and those are good comparisons. Better yet would be to compare them to the lo-fi pioneers from New Zealand like the Clean or the Tall Dwarfs, or any band whose technical limitations (imposed through necessity or by choice) never got in the way of delivering a good song. Rip It Off is overloaded with good songs and provided you don't let silly things like clean sound get in the way of enjoying good songs, you might find yourself infatuated with Times New Viking.
*Today's two person review of Rip It Off by Times New Viking is brought to you by Sage and Ethan.**Sage's Rating*: 7.8*Ethan's Rating*: 6.5*For fans of* Apples In Stereo...if that "stereo" was a set of 10-year-old laptop speakers.*Single* The Apt ST: Today we have Times New Viking's Rip It Off, their third studio album.EE: I have to admit, I hadn't heard of these guys before. I thought their na...
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By the end of 2008, Times New Viking will either start a revolution or be laughed off as a novelty band. Which result we choose will predict a lot about our post-Bush American music scene.TNV makes no secret of their desire to have a Sex Pistols–like effect on indie rock, from stage names like “harmish kilgour” and “brix e. smith” to naming their Matador debut Rip It Off. But they’re n
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A lot of people are digging this band these days including the folks at Pitchfork, natch. Here's a track off the debut, Rip It Off.
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*Today's two person review of Rip It Off by Times New Viking is brought to you by Sage and Ethan.**Sage's Rating*: 7.8*Ethan's Rating*: 6.5*For fans of* Apples In Stereo...if that "stereo" was a set of 10-year-old laptop speakers.*Single* The Apt ST: Today we have Times New Viking's Rip It Off, their third studio album.EE: I have to admit, I hadn't heard of these guys before. I thought their na...
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Dear Times New Viking,Your album is depressingly shit. I am actually angry at the people who told me I should listen to it, sad for not trusting in Record Store Girl when she said it was awful, and hoping that there's at least a bit of redemption to be found in your first two albums.I'm normally a bit less blunt about music I don't like, but the thing that pisses me off isn't that the music is ...
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In the first part of this show I talk with Erik Pepple of the Wexner Center about the upcoming Times New Viking show at the Wexner performance space, plus other "Next at Wex" events in Februray and March. Kyle of Lost Weekend Records mines his stacks of vinyl for Columbus pop, garage, soul and country music, going back to the mid '60s.Stream It: http://patradio.org/blix/wimpy.phpDownload It (...
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So much for setting off a doomsday device on indie rock. After my interview with Jared Phillips, I was immediately reminded of Chuck Klosterman's essay in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs about the utter detachment of the music press from actual musicians themselves. Jared was quick to shoot down my suggestions of an indie rock revolution, but not without throwing in a few jabs at the current establi...
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By the end of 2008, Times New Viking will either start a revolution or be laughed off as a novelty band. Which result we choose will predict a lot about our post-Bush American music scene.TNV makes no secret of their desire to have a Sex Pistols–like effect on indie rock, from stage names like “harmish kilgour” and “brix e. smith” to naming their Matador debut Rip It Off. But they’re n
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If you're looking for a band to shake the music world in 2008, Times New Viking may be that band. My full review of their first Matador album, Rip it Off, will appear in the Maroon on Tuesday, but to tease you with the first paragraph, I make the bold prediction that "By the end of 2008, Times New Viking will either start a revolution or be laughed off as a novelty band. Which result we choose ...
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4. Times New Viking Rip It Off An album like this should have worn itself thin by now, but instead it has been worn out from excessive plays. Well it would have been, if mp3's got worn out. As it is, I have been listening to this record since January and each time I pop it on I still find myself banging my head along to each and every scratchy, lo-fi sound on the record. Going into this re...
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Teen Drama |
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| 2 My Head |
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| 3 Rip Allegory |
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| 4 The Wait |
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| 5 Drop-Out |
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| 6 Come Together |
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| 7 Faces on Fire |
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| 8 Relevant: Now |
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| 9 The Early 80s |
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| 10 Mean God |
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| 11 Another Day |
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| 12 The Apt. |
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| 13 Off the Wall |
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| 14 End of All Things |
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| 15 Times New Viking vs. Yo La Tengo |
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| 16 Post Teen Drama |
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Click to purchase…
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 "Rip It Off")
