Times New Viking
Stay Awake [EP]
Release Date: Oct 21, 2008
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Matador
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Album Review: Stay Awake [EP] by Times New Viking
Excellent, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 8.5/10
Times New Viking’s Stay Awake EP follows up the band's first Matador release, Rip It Off, with the same fuzz skuzz pop magic that has worked for it since its inception. The band’s primitive recording technique -- much hated, much loved -- remains. And it continues to scrape our ears clean. So clean, in fact, that their catchy melodic sing-alongs attach themselves even more firmly to the squishy gray matter of our brains.
Based on rating 8/10
Some people say things about ostensibly shitty sounding bands like Times New Viking such as "if they don’t care about how they sound then why should we?". There are several easy answers to that, but the most pertinent is "if you can sound this close to an actual junkyard while still salvaging some of the best pop hooks around then why does it matter?". It's nothing new to sound as thrashy 'n' trashy as this, of course, but somehow TNV make their scuzz different by paying equal attention to aesthetics and pure pop as ear-searing noise.