Articles tagged with Times New Viking

In love with novelties

June 16, 2011
Thank god this isn't black and white
So last night was a little crazy, wasn’t it? I left downtown as soon as the game ended, thereby avoiding the rowdiness completely, but here is a photo of the smoke that I shot a couple of hours later from my balcony. The news footage of the rioting was fascinating in a completely appalling way. You know how people say they can’t look away from a car wreck? Well last night was about 100 car wrecks.

I’ve got a whole load of great Vancouver bands to post in the next week or two, but for now, here’s the awesome “Fuck Her Tears” by Times New Viking. I interviewed the band for the Georgia Straight.

This song comes from Dancer Equired, out now through Merge.


 
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They were smoke and we were fire

October 17, 2010
Hey guys, pull my finger
Here’s the latest from Times New Viking, “No Room to Live.” After several albums that were the perhaps the shittiest of shitgaze (sonically speaking), this track is relatively clean. It’s still lo-fi, but this time it’s not entirely soaked in speaker-blown fuzz, and the low end is a little fuller.

Go to Exclaim! to read my article about this song and learn about the band’s upcoming album.

MP3: “No Room to Live”
 
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We’ve all got something to hide

September 2, 2009
Yo La Tengo
When it comes to Yo La Tengo, the noisier the better. The group got ornate on its last album, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, with peppy pop songs that augmented the usual three-piece setup with layers of horns, strings and keys. It was an impressive feat, but the lighter material was overshadowed by the first and last songs, both of which were fuzzed-out guitar epics.

The follow-up, Popular Songs, is due next week, and the first video/single is another noisy gem from the New Jersey trio. “Nothing to Hide” taps into the group’s ’80s indie rock roots, pairing white-wash distortion with hazy reverb and a monotonous groove. The tune itself is pure pop bliss, its sunny melodies delivered with gentle boy-girl harmonies and its instantly-hummable refrain supported by cheesy organ flourishes.

The video takes place at a Yo La Tengo in-store performance, but the band doesn’t actually appear. Instead, Times New Viking stands in for the group, miming along to the song while the proprietor busts shoplifters, High Fidelity-style. Times New Viking is an apt choice for the clip—not only because the group has the same three-piece set-up (two guys and a girl), but also because the song’s mixture of lo-fi grime and summery bubblegum pop sounds like something that could have appeared on last year’s Rip It Off (albeit with the crackling overdrive scaled back somewhat). Filmed with grainy, home movie-style cameras, it’s a simple but entertaining video.



Popular Songs is out September 8 via Matador.
 
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Times New Viking ups the fidelity (but not really)

July 9, 2009
g20times1
Times New Viking released its third album, Rip It Off, just 18 months ago, but it already sounds ahead of its time. Since then, ultra lo-fi fuzz rock has suddenly become popular, and bands like Wavves, Vivian Girls and No Age have achieved buzz-band status in the wake of Times New Viking’s success.

Times New Viking is set to release its fourth album, Born Again Revisited, on September 22, and according to a press release from Matador, it will feature “25% higher fidelity” than previous recordings. Of course, sound quality is a relative term for Times New Viking—after all, the group delivered the new album’s master recordings on VHS tape. The lead single, “No Time No Hope,” scales back the distortion of 2008’s Rip It Off, but it’s still messier than just about anything else you’ll hear this year.

This isn’t to say the song doesn’t show some stylistic progress for the Columbus trio. Unlike the band’s usual bite-sized approach to songwriting, “No Time No Hope” clocks in at 2:51, making it longer than all but one of the 16 tracks on Rip It Off. It’s a chugging, organ-heavy groove without much of a discernible structure, spending its runtime alternating between shouted verses and catchy instrumental breaks. Based on this preview, Born Again Revisited promises to be one of the fall’s must-hear albums.

Listen to the song over at Matablog.
 
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