
Les Savy Fav
Inches
Frenchkiss
2004
B+

Well, it matters, man, because I really, really want to call Les Savy Fav’s collection of singles Inches ‘high concept’. Here’s the story: way way back in the mists of time (1996), before the band had even released any product, they decided to embark upon an epic undertaking that would see them release nine different singles, each on a different label. Bold, brash, and not a little beautiful: finally, in 2004, their quest is over, and for those of us too lazy to track each release down we have Inches, an 18 song collection comprising all nine singles. So was their journey really necessary?
Any collection that spans such a long time in a band’s development is likely to suffer from varying quality across style and song-writing. Inches succeeds, and then some, because the record simply doesn’t sound like it’s been collated together over a nine year period. Period. Trust me, at the end of this disc of forking guitars and head-bopping rhythms your ears should be bleeding, your hips shaking, and your fingers flicking through the pages of your nearest dictionary trying to work out what the hell vocalist Tim Harrington is growling about. That’s not to say that there’s no sense of evolution on display: it’s just that even the oldest track (“Rodeo”, released in 1997 on Sub Pop) sounds fully realized—just a little fuzzier than the rest. Beginning with 2004’s “Meet Me in the Dollar Bin” on Monitor (whose first minute of burbling synths and sparse percussion led me to expect a dose of !!!-like skullduggery), the disc proceeds backwards to “Rodeo”, taking in wonderful Spoon-esque new wave (“We’ll Make A Lover of You”), spooky Vini Reilly guitar lines (“Hello Halo, Goodbye Glands”) and extremely strange performance art (“Reformat (Live)”) along the way. While the band are essentially doing nothing new here (“a guitar band from around New York that plays funky, danceable music? Really?”) they call upon a quite different set of influences than many of their contemporaries—the guitar-playing of Seth Jabour often conjures forth the delay-pedal finery of none other than The Edge, while the melodic coda of “Fading Vibes” sounds like New Order circa Lowlife, complete with Hooky-like bass lines from Syd Butler. Plus it’s catchy as hell. Buy, or be damned.

Reviewed by: Dave McGonigle Reviewed on: 2004-09-01 Comments (1) |