Foxygen
Take the Kids Off Broadway EP
Jagjaguwar
Aug 15, 2012 Foxygen
At some point in the past four or five years, the line between pop music touched by the ‘60s and retro-sounding indie folk became so blurred that the two are now effectively one and the same. Think of modern indie bands who have made it kind of big and they’re most likely a band that sounds like an amalgamation of yesteryear’s mixtapes; fuck a new idea, let’s just make a great-sounding record.
Falling firmly into this retro folk-pop bracket is Foxygen, who have just released their debut EP Take the Kids Off Broadway. It’s a record that’s decidedly of the era of MGMT and Phoenix, yet it’s equally a throwback to the counterculture movement of 1968; to look at the duo’s press photographs could easily be to look at a snapshot of the German student movement that inspired the era’s most lasting music.
In interviews, Sam France and Jonathan Rado deeply profess their love of Brian Jonestown Massacre; while the similarities are clear throughout, on tracks such as “Waitin’ 4 U” and “Middle School Dance” especially there is an inescapable resemblance between France’s vocals and those of Mick Jagger. Of course, this being the day of Spotify, iTunes, and the mashup album, it seems there is no longer any reason to leave a single one of your influences out, so there’s always room for some Velvet Underground-style folk freakouts or Malcolm Mooney-era Can noodling; on the 10-minute highlight “Teenage Alien Blues,” we’re even treated to the whole lot thrown together in one song.
Author rating: 7.5/10
Average reader rating: 9/10
Most Recent
- Interplay (Review) — Ride
- Feeder @ Rock City, Nottingham, UK, March 25, 2024 (Review) — Feeder
- Bernard Butler (ex-Suede) Announces First Solo Album in 25 Years, Shares New Song “Camber Sands” (News) — Bernard Butler, Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler, Suede, McAlmont & Butler
- Arab Strap Share Video for New Song “Strawberry Moon” (News) — Arab Strap
- Hovvdy Share New Song “Make Ya Proud” (News) — Hovvdy
Comments
Submit your comment
There are no comments for this entry yet.