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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Full Tilt BritPop, May 30, 2005
All Right.....it finally happened! BritPop is ready to peak with Louis XIV. With the exception of Jack White's White Stripes, there hasn't been a band like this one in more than a decade. Jason Hill and Brian Karscig have resurrected an incredible range of influences while doing original songs with dirtier lyrics and pushing the whole show to a higher plane. Kick-ass riffs, chunking rhythm, snarling in-your-face lyrics......this is what is has always been about and Hill and Karscig and drummer Mark Maigaard are making sure it stays that way. All Hail Rock And Roll!
OK, where do I start? Oh....obviously The lyrics, god...the lyrics!
Little Stacy Q/When she doesn't have anything to do/She comes to my house/She takes off her clothes/She likes to tell this boy what to do/Pledges her allegiance to the United States of ME
Milkshake, milkshake/I love to see you sweat/
Sing me a song/Bang me like the girls in Hong Kong/politics is so much better when there's sex
girl, well you're lookin' like somethin I won/and your little Asian friend/she can come if she wants
I want miss little smart girl with your glasses and all your books/and I want the stupid girl that gives me all those dirty looks/(she says) wind you up and make you crawl to me/tie you up until you call to me
there are lots more....get the CD!
I've been around way too long (I heard Not Fade Away the 1st time AM radio played it) but the list of bands that absolutely nailed me first time out is short.....Louis XIV/Convoy is now one of less than 10. These guys will rank with the Kinks, Marc Bolan/T.Rex, & White Stripes. (How come nobody thinks the "Pledge" sounds like Adam Ant anyway? - surely he isn't completely forgotten!). The greatest thing is that this CD sounds like they found the Kinks' ancient Little Green Amp in the dumpster behind the studio in France and just plugged right in where Ray and Dave left off.
Yes, I've seen them live (Chicago's Metro last week).....they were fantastic with incredible wall of sound rifs chunkin on and on between the best songs. If I closed my eyes I could swear Marc Bolan and Adam Ant had managed to get the Kinks to back them on all these new songs. They do need to work on their set list a bit (Ball of Twine needs to be at the halfway point and the encore needs to be something so the crowd leaves with a sound in their heads....try Illegal Tender or the Pledge or even Louis XIV).
Note that there is a previously recorded album as Convoy...it's not hard to find.
I seldom do this, but there is a really good review (much better than mine) already done on this album if you want to take a second to find it. It's Alexander Laurence's "Get the dirty versions" posted on April 17, 2005
As much as I can't get enough of Kaiser Chiefs, The Libertines, Bloc Party, Razorlight, Frames, Embrace, Interpol, The Killers, Hot Hot Heat, & Kings of Leon.....Jason and Brian with Mark have something greater going here and you can tell on every single track!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Was the Sun King really this horny?, April 13, 2007
How did I hear about Louis XIV? When I heard Finding Out True Love is Blind on my brother's MLB 2000-and-something PS2 game. That was it -- I went out and bought this album the next day. I wasn't disappointed.
The first eight songs troll through a garagey, Brit-poppy aesthetic, as has now been mentioned a million and one times when describing this album, and every step along the way is catchy as hell. But I contend this is more of concept album than people realize.
While the cheap come-on lines are sure to offend feminists and prudes, the final couplet of All the Little Pieces and Ball of Twine go in a completely different direction from the first eight tracks, the former substituting the trashy guitars (which come to the fore on True Love, God Killed the Queen and Illegal Tender) for symphonic sweeps and the latter adding plaintive acoustic guitar that morphs into the string melody that opens the album.
Not that the lyrics carry the weight of Pink Floyd or Bright Eyes, but Louis XIV through to Hey Teacher seem to be about an undersexed guy fresh off a breakup looking to plug whatever holes are out there. Our hero has his fun with vanilla friends, illegal tenders, kinky seductresses and sultry schoolteachers, but the delicate focus found on All the Little Pieces and Ball of Twine seemingly indicate that kind of fun only lasts so long and that our narrator would like nothing more than to retreat to the life he left behind.
Of course, I could be wrong, and the storyline on this album isn't the point. The point is every track, whether it be one of the hang-out-with-the-wang-out rockers or one of the gentler interludes, is purely fantastic. I'm still taking this one off the shelf on a semi-weekly basis because it's that good.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Secret is Out, May 6, 2006
Full disclosure: I am not a pop music fan, let alone any band that sounds slightly British these days. So for a San Diego-based band to sound Britpopish does not curry favor with me.
But Holy S, these guys are AWESOME.
Clearly, the first piece of Louis XIV that you notice is the lyrics; overtly sexual, dirty, and over the top. Fortunately, I happen to like that sort of thing, even though most of my fellow Americans have connived to create the most puritanical society in the world outside of the Muslim countries. So to me, the lyrics aren't just the words, it's the attitude; and the attitude is one which has been missing from American music since the fall of heavy metal.
See, music is supposed to be sexy; maybe these guys overdo it by throwing subtlety out the window, but everyone else has been so afraid to be sexy that perhaps Louis XIV is making up for some seriously lost time. The Killers and Franz Ferdinand are great bands, but they don't ooze the energy we used to feel when Skid Row or Motley Crue (when they were younger) would go on tour. Louis XIV brings it back - in spades.
But that's not all there is to it; the music rocks! And it's not linear or monophonic in any way. In "Dominique" and "All The Little Pieces" and "Louis XIV", you have three completely distinct types of songs, all fantastic, all totally different. I have more than once caught myself singing "Well there's a house on the block that's empty now that Dominique's gone" in the middle of a bar because I just can't get the song out of my head. Catchy to the extreme, dirty to the core, and more importantly, it just plain rocks.
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