It’s time to party like it’s the year before the year 2008. With the release of “Legendary Tippers” a few weeks back, Les Savy Fav revealed themselves as being among the hoard of aughts post-hardcore groups (not to mention LSF members Seth Jabour and Syd Butler’s bandmate Marnie Stern from Fred Armisen’s 8G Band featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers) suddenly back from an extended hiatus with explosive new music.
Today not only sees another new single from the band, but also the official announcement of Les Savy Fav’s new album and first release since 2010’s Root for Ruin, with OUI, LSF arriving May 10 via Frenchkiss Records and The Orchard. “The last record was a lot about holding on,” Butler shares of the new project. “OUI, LSF is the sound of release—no map, no preconceptions, no self-righteous certainty. There’s nothing like hitting 50 to slap the cocksure vanity off your face.”
The new single “Guzzle Blood” embraces this reckless attitude while hitting the perfect balance of post-hardcore fury and mid-’00s dance-punk charm. Opening the record with wailing synths, vocalist Tim Harrington’s familiar bellows, and a “Sabotage”-esque door-kicking-down instrumental, the single is a promising beacon of what’s to follow. “It sums up an emotional state that took hold of me a few years after Root for Ruin,” Harrington explains of the track.
“I was a mess. My sense of self as an artist smashed head-on into my personal life and relationships with the people I loved. Relationships are a theme in the record. And faith is the center of all relationships... So, launching from this place of a complete loss of faith on a universal scale felt essential to establish where I was coming from on a journey through what, at times, is a profound state of desperation.”
Regarding the band’s decision to record again, Harrington addss: “Part of what got the gears going on the record actually came from listening to ourselves. Maybe that sounds shitty. Luckily, we don't really care. Around 2000, we recorded an EP called Rome (Written Upside Down)... It’s a very special record for us. It was also a record that got lost in the shift to streaming and was unavailable for 20 years. Maybe two years ago Syd finally got the rights back so we could put it back into the world on streamers. Listening back to it hit us like it was made by strangers. We kept asking, ‘What were we thinking?’ It’s full of idiosyncrasy. I can hear our curiosity. As we began working on OUI, LSF we knew we wanted to connect with that feeling of careless play. Like, what happens if you can hold 20-plus years of experience in the same hand as that naive energy?”
Check out the Itchy and Scratchy–esque animated video for the track below, and pre-save OUI, LSF here before it arrives in May.
