Les Savy Fav/ Root For Ruin

Les Savy Fav
Root for Ruin
(Wichita)

Bands coming onto the circuit could learn a lot from Les Savy Fav - a merry bunch who have flown in the face of Web 2.0 and built a fan base the old fashioned way: by touring relentlessly and taking over the musical world one bar, one town and eventually one city at a time.
Their music has always been an honest reflection of this because, well, when your entire marketing model is built on the notion that you need to blow people’s ears off at a live show, why would you want to give anything less than that on CD?
Their new album ‘Root for Ruin’ hones in on this and retains a real ‘garage band’ feel to it – and not in the same way that The Strokes were packaged as a ‘garage band’ either. The songs feel raw, but in no way under-produced, and are more than in keeping with the band’s overall ethos. Tracks like ‘Dirty Knails’ and ‘Lips n’ Stuff’, with their screeching, treble-heavy guitar lines and rough, cantering drum beats, typify the sort of mid-level riot you can expect from this album.
On paper it all sounds rather Lo-Fi but, contrary to what members of the Big Pink may contest, that’s not a fancy way of saying this lot sound rubbish; in fact, in the case of Les Savy Fav it really is quite the opposite. They’ve even included a suitably psychedelic, descent-down-a-rabbit-hole track titled ‘Poltergeist’ on the album, just in case the unbridled, balls-out slices of rock n’ roll get too much for you. Bless.
Whilst previous album ‘Let’s Stay Friends’ dabbled with the idea of bringing in gurus from other bands to bolster certain tracks, this album is purely crafted by the band’s five core members – and ‘Root For Ruin’ is all the better for it. There’s an energy about a Les Savy Fav album that’s becoming harder and harder to find in current releases, but with this album, they’ve proved you don’t always have to sell your soul for rock n’ roll.