PeeP on PoP- Times New Viking

Times New Viking- Dancer Equired (Merge- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

74______________________

Dear skronk, noise, fuzz, scuzz , and feedback, your departure from Dancer Equired has been greatly exaggerated. You are the new Times New Viking record, and no one would mistake you for anything else.  

Now that that’s out of the way, yes, this is the most recent offering from TNV, and it’s pretty damn good.

 What’s been easy to miss in the Times New Viking’s four previous records is the songwriting and tuneage, a cool mix of punked out, drowsy pandemonium, pleasingly amateurish off-key singing, and Robert Pollard indebted melodies (Like Guided by Voices, Times New Viking is from Ohio). All of that remains intact here, but is just slightly more comfortable to listen to. And by comfortable, I mean literally that it is just easier enough on my ears to put Dancer Equired into my regular playlist on my iPod, because it doesn’t ambush my ears with a significantly higher decibel level than ALL THE OTHER MUSIC on my player, sending me scrambling into my pocket to turn that shit down when a TNV song off of Dig Yourself (2005), Paisley Reich (2007), Rip it Off (2008), or Born Again Revisited (2009) comes up on shuffle. And for that I thank you. 

So all the clatter and racket remain, and the white noise is still there, just kept at a more tasteful level for these old ears to ingest. I missed these guys drinking some beers in the bar downstairs when they opened for Guided by Voices last fall in Portland, which is something I regret. I would stop short of calling this the band’s best album, but it is solid, it is punk, and it is just quieter enough. Just quieter enough to go on shuffle. 

For Fans of: Comet Gain, The Mantles, Royal Trux