Customer Reviews

The Love Language

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bought their record at their show in New Haven, CT sometime in January or February I think. It's wound up probably being my most played record I've acquired this year. I just can't get over it.

The album is great, 9 songs that include no filler, just good tunes with great hooks. They sound like a mix between The Arcade Fire (perfect mélange of layered instruments, tinkling piano faintly in the background, vivacious choruses, the melancholia of analog recording and timid production...) and The Cold War Kids (dissonant vocals, heavy tambourine, all as if played and recorded in a large room).

They are not as vocal driven as The Cold War Kids, though, which is great. The lead singer is often accompanied by others in a ghostly chorus, the thick fat of the vocals resting atop a simmering stew of guitars, pianos, drums, tambourine, a humming bass, at times all mashed up together to the point it'd be almost impossible to pick out a single instrument to focus on any more than a moment.

So I enjoyed the album and I definitely recommend it. My only criticism of the album is its terrible production. The band was good enough to pull off a great album, however, even with the cringing distortion during some of the shouted vocals and barely being able to hear the drums or guitars some of the time over the tambourine. Maybe that was their intention, which I hope wasn't.

I can see this band having an awesome second album, with hopefully a better level of production. All the other pieces are already there.

For more info, see: [...]

This is an amazing album with brilliant a brilliant and rich lo-fi sound. Looking forward to their future releases on Merge!

First let me state that I had never heard of this band until recently. I saw the Love Language in concert this past weekend (opening for Camera Obscura here in Cincinnati at the excellent Indie Summer series), and they put on an absolutely tremedous show, with high energy and lots of uptempo songs that simply blew off my socks. So I purchased the album on the spot.

"The Love Language" (9 tracks; 29 min.) is, after seeing the band live, simply a perplexing album. The opening track "Two Rabbits" is a slow, pensive track, huh? It is followed by "Lalita", one of those uptempo, high energy tracks I saw the band perform this past weekend, and really the ONLY track like that on here. But then it's off again to "Stars", another slow song, and alas really many more tracks like that would follow, such as "Sparkxxx", "Night Dogs", "Providence", and "Graycourt".

I tend to buy a band's CD after seeing them live if I enjoy them. To be honest, it's been a LONG time since I've had such a disconnect between the band's live set and their album. The Love Language was a pleasant surprise for me when I saw them this past weekend, but it doesn't resonate on this album. Buyer beware.