Sometimes, a little break can do you the world of good. Les Savy Fav took six years between releasing 2001's Go Forth and its follow-up Let's Stay Friends. On the back of accessible yet riveting singles such as Patty Lee and What Would Wolves Do, that album that provided the cross-over into mainstream recognition, bolstering their reputation as being a formidable and highly volatile live act.A further three years down the line (and a full month earlier than initially planned due to a premature leak) and LSF are back with Root For Ruin, a very much back-to-basics album, which strips back some of the sheen from Let's Stay Friends, and focuses on the guitar interplay of Seth Jabour and Andrew Reuland to deliver a more immediately gratifying set.
There's still plenty of poppier moments on the record. The jangle of Sleepless In Silverlake and the big chorus of Let's Get Out Of Here form the album's catchiest duo of songs whilst the choppy, slackened guitars of Dear Crutches could almost be Modest Mouse.
When the band strays off the well-beaten path, however, the results are even better. Poltergeist is a dark, claustrophobic affair, which has both a stoned and gothic quality to it. Closing track Clear Spirits, meanwhile, is much more exotic, with its big eastern riffs and Egyptian imagery. Both tracks, with their haunting, reverberating vocals, show that Les Savy Fav can do atmosphere just as well as punching you in the gut.
Root For Ruin is, in summary, Les Savy Fav through and through, and that's mostly for better rather than for worse. It's a very strong and highly enjoyable set of songs which stick close to what LSF do so well, but its successful forays elsewhere hint at what a great album it might have been, and what hopefully might be next time around.
Root For Ruin hits the ground running with Appetites, and rarely pauses to catch its breath (the clues are there in the song titles - High And Unhinged, Excess Energies, Let's Get Out Of Here). All the hallmarks of a great LSF track are there in that opener; the barbed, interlocking guitars, Tim Harrington's rasping vocals and sick wordplay ("The stakes are so low that we eat off the floor/that's what we got long tongues for"). The likes of Lips'N'Stuff, Dirty Knails and Excess Energies follow very much in the same mould. Throughout Root For Ruin, guitarists Jabour and Reuland assert themselves as one of the finest and on-the-dial pairings around, finding the middle ground between the intricacy of Television's Verlaine and Lloyd and the intensity of Fugazi's MacKaye and Picciotto.
There's still plenty of poppier moments on the record. The jangle of Sleepless In Silverlake and the big chorus of Let's Get Out Of Here form the album's catchiest duo of songs whilst the choppy, slackened guitars of Dear Crutches could almost be Modest Mouse.
When the band strays off the well-beaten path, however, the results are even better. Poltergeist is a dark, claustrophobic affair, which has both a stoned and gothic quality to it. Closing track Clear Spirits, meanwhile, is much more exotic, with its big eastern riffs and Egyptian imagery. Both tracks, with their haunting, reverberating vocals, show that Les Savy Fav can do atmosphere just as well as punching you in the gut.
Root For Ruin is, in summary, Les Savy Fav through and through, and that's mostly for better rather than for worse. It's a very strong and highly enjoyable set of songs which stick close to what LSF do so well, but its successful forays elsewhere hint at what a great album it might have been, and what hopefully might be next time around.
76/100
Listen to if you like: F*cked Up, Future Of The Left
Listen to if you like: F*cked Up, Future Of The Left
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