Just when it was almost over, Les Savy
Fav reanimated the rotting corpse of '90s
rock with a dissonant cocktail of driving
bass, disco drumming, bratty guitars,
and spastic vocals. Get ready to kick
out the jams.
Give us your money or your life. Les
Savy Fav is not a band. They are pirates
in biplanes, doctors in triage, bonfires
on oil rigs with magnets and coils. There are five of them all told, though it may seem like more when you hear them on stage or meet them on the street. Such is the nature of their personalities. Since 1995, Les Savy Fav have been perfecting their concoction of dissonant pop defined by its driving bass, disco drumming, bratty guitars, and spastic vocals, as illustrated by a fist full of seven-inches and the cult classic full-length 3/5. For the recording and much of the writing of The Cat and the Cobra, the band was joined by new drummer Harrison Haynes. He, like former drummer Pat Mahoney, met
the rest of the band while studying art
at the Rhode Island School of Design, the same school the Talking Heads went
to. Like the Talking Heads, Les Savy Fav is committed to making indiosyncratic pop music; songs which are deceptively simple and deceptively complex.
As they have said, "All music fans will
become our willing hostages in a kinky
little game we've devised where they
commit crimes against the politics of
post rock under the guise of being the
helpless puppets of Les Savy Fav!" So there.
