I’m honestly not sure if these guys are singing in English or what. It sounds more like a pack of angry animals or drooling vampires croaking over a chiming and expansive soundscape. But before you check that off as a bad thing, imagine a bizarro combination of Band of Horses and like a Frog Eyes, Wolf Parade / Wilderness mash up. Hard to fathom? Then try a smattering of Modest Mouse for good measure. What you’re left with is something that sounds vaguely evil (as their full name World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation might suggest) but is also on the verge of dancey and is clearly produced to within an inch of its lovely brink. It would have been easy to tame some of the insane drumming, tamp down the echo a bit and find a lead singer who didn’t sound as if he was being burned alive while he was shouting and called itself the new new pop band, but these guys, from my minimal reading on the subject, don’t sound like the kind of dudes who go for convention. Granted in this day and age, being weird and “controversial” is the standard. So who knows what’s real and what’s just smart salesmanship on their part? Whatever the case, they’ve made an album here that defies my minimal ability to describe its coolness. I’m sure only the Williamsburg crowd will be able to validate their hipness, and I’m certain they’re already well on their way to be being crowned the new new thing.
