#232 The Naked and the Famous - Passive Me, Aggressive You

Heard these guys on NPR and it spurred the mini kiwi kick I'm on now. They're from New Zealand. Kiwi. Natch.

I try not to be a an ass / lazy reviewer by deconstructing an album into its influences and sounds-likes, but sometimes that's just how I perceive an album. Sometimes, if you sound enough like things I've heard before, I can't stop hearing those songs too, while I'm trying to listen to your album. This kinda ruined the Clues album for me. Here, the overriding point of reference is singles-off-oracular-spectacular MGMT: the male singer sounds like them, the guitar buzz sounds like them, the song structures sound like them, the big gated/synth snares on the 2's and 4's sound like them. This is especially on tracks 13, 2 (which sounds goddamn exactly like Kids for most of its duration) and 7 (which also more or less cops the main vocal riff from Passion Pit's Sleepyhead for good measure). I'm not trying to be a wiseass, honestly. But I keep getting aggressively reminded of these bands while I'm trying to listen.

Track 9 sounds like YYY's annual maps-alike, track 5 sounds like Trent Reznor remixing Everything in its Right Place (down to the cadence of the vocal delivery and the same organ sound), and track 10 seemingly cops the exact same background guitar chug from TVotR's Staring at the Sun (like, exactly) along with the TVotR-trademarked oooo's at the end, almost as a wink. Are these guys taking the piss? I'll assume not. Track 6 spends its first minute sounding (a lot) like an M83 cover, and track 1 sounds like Los Campesinos covering All My Friends.

And look, I like those songs, and I like those sounds. And if I had never heard of those bands, I would probably love this. And some tracks survive. I like the breakdown in the opening track a lot, and track 9 has a nice off-kilter energy to it, evoking my love of Zooropa rather than drowning me in sounding exactly like a specific song.

The other issue, though, is the production, the most interesting bits seem added in post, and don't feel well-integrated with the tunes themselves. It sounds like someone recorded some fairly straightforward tracks, and then pulled out every trick they knew to buff them, rip them, and generally try to inject interest. The result is like pre-weathered jeans in album form.

I kind of want to like this album; its always the albums I'm most conflicted about that I write the longest posts for, as I try to justify to myself the position I've settled into. And maybe these songs will supplant those they're impersonating in my mind. But for now its just too derivative to enjoy, it feels like someone had Gregg Gillis remix all of their favorite indie rock songs, tweaked the notes a bit, and rerecorded it as new songs.

Maybe its an honest set of coincidences, maybe its calculated appropriation performed to create a salable product, maybe its just homage gone too far, maybe I'm reading too much into it. And, heck, if you have no idea what I'm talking about with all those references, go buy this album! Or, check those reference points out and tell me I'm wrong. But for me, its like watching A Thin Red Line, so many recognizable cameos I can't get immersed in the plot 2.5/5