Les Savy Fav
OUI, LSF
FRENCHKISS
Of everyone that emerged from the indie rock explosion in Brooklyn in the early 2000s, Les Savy Fav weren’t the band that left the heaviest impact. They didn’t whip mainstream audiences into a frenzy like The Strokes did, and they didn’t creep into the Billboard Hot 100 like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs did. They weren’t the main characters in Meet Me in the Bathroom, the book and later documentary adaptation about that very scene; they suspiciously garnered less attention than The Moldy Peaches, and they didn’t have the same tailors as Interpol.
Yet Les Savy Fav are not an easy band to forget. Their live sets in the first decade of the new millennium were the stuff of legend in large part due to the antics of singer Tim Harrington, who built a reputation for hamming it up onstage—or frequently off. He spent as much time among the crowd as in front of it, in absurd outfits or sometimes stripping out of them, while the rest of the group were something like the post-punk J.B.’s, playing as tight as possible without drawing attention away from the main attraction. Yet for all the zany pageantry of the live show, the group honed their sound into a tight, potent, and endlessly catchy hybrid of dance-punk and post-hardcore. Maybe they weren’t the biggest or the most glamorous of the early-’00s New York scene, but it’s no hyperbole to say they were one of the best.
Fourteen years after the release of 2010’s Root for Ruin, Les Savy Fav make their return with OUI, LSF, ending over a decade of inactivity with an album that offers the best kind of reminder of just how thrilling a band they are. The opening siren wail and glam-rock stop of leadoff track “Guzzle Blood” portends something powerful and dramatic, building up a charged and electrifying atmosphere for the 13 tracks that follow. Yet in spite of that opening fanfare, OUI, LSF feels less like a statement than simply five friends reveling in the opportunity to get back in the same room together to rock out. The band sounds as tight as ever, rhythmically and instrumentally, but stylistically they keep it loose. In the sleek post-punk of “Limo Scene,” they veer closer to Interpol’s bespoke, dreamy darkness than ever, while “Dawn Patrol” is arguably the prettiest song they’ve ever recorded, with Harrington offering spoken-word verses amid atmospheric, fluttering guitars.
The group’s goofball spirit, as reflected in Harrington’s outsized stage presence, remains intact on OUI, LSF. Harrington rhymes “posh” with “Hieronymus Bosch” on the hip-swinging new-wave pop of lead single “Legendary Tippers.” There’s a song called “Oi! Division,” and it absolutely rips. More than anything, Les Savy Fav simply sound like they’re enjoying themselves—and it’s infectious. Harrington confirms as much on “Somebody Needs a Hug,” perhaps the catchiest song of the bunch: “I’m havin’ fun right now,” he repeats with a yelp. That makes two of us.
