Columbus' Times New Viking are hardly the first Ohio band hellbent on making music not for mass consumption. From the Dead Boys to the Rubber City Rebels to the Pagans and Electric Eels, the Buckeye State has seen no shortage of influential purveyors of deliberately unpolished sound.
Times New Viking, formed in 2004 by art school pals Adam Elliot, Beth Murphy and Jared Philips, have helped set the course for a recent wash of no-fi groups (see Vivian Girls, No Age, Wavves), with four LPs, including 2008s Rip It Off, which landed the band a spot on indie powerhouse Matador's roster. The lo-fi, jerky sounds cultivated by Sebadoh, Pavement and Dayton's Guided By Voices, are clearly channeled on TNV's Born Again Revisited, though delightfully unrefined in comparison to their 90s predecessors.
All the tracks on this 16-song blitz sound as if recorded on well-worn tape using a children's mic in a poorly insulated garage. The recording makes even the best stereo systems sound dreadful, and that's part of the charm. The organ is all over the final mix, drums are tinny and rattling, guitars are treble-heavy and gratingly distorted, and the vocals shrill. However, there are true pop gems hidden in the mess.
TNV's brilliance (or stubbornness) is evidenced on songs like "I Smell Bubblegum", which is laughably cacophonous, the vocals hilariously out of tune, but it's catchy. One wonders whether it's a tongue-in-cheek commentary on what most pop stars sound like sans post-production fluffing. Driven by Murphy's infectious organ phrasing, "City on Drugs" recalls the gritty yet urbane pop of the Velvet Underground, while the title track would not seem out of place on a Nuggets compilation. The college radio fav "No Time, No Hope" demonstrates the group's knack for crafting an indelible pop melody, then distorting it to create something much more interesting. Perhaps, like Jesus and Mary Chain, TNV hopes to kill "Surf City."
On "Move to California" and "Those Days", TNV delivers the record's most accessible (relative term) numbers, with clearer pop sensibilities, moving from the garage and into the parlor. The last two tracks, sounding a bit like the tune of a demented jack in the box ("Take The Piss") and sadly unadulterated art punk ("Pentagram"), clock in at approximately 1:30, which is plenty long enough.
Born Again Revisited is the type of record that will inspire countless people to pick up instruments and piece together original material. It's music that encourages music, whether people are inspired by its brash rebuttal of Top 40, or motivated by the belief that they could do it better. Either way, it's noisy and it's a good thing.
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