Originally the project of Robert Suchan, Koufax now also boast the former Get-Up Kids' rhythm section, brothers Ryan and Robert Pope, as full-time members. The band claims to mix 70s rock with modern indie and pop, and cite ELO, Supertramp, and Steely Dan as their biggest influences. After hearing Hard Times are in Fashion, I'll grant them this: They have pianos. Opener "Why Bother At All" adds an extraneous barrel-boogie piano line to it's jerky new-wave rhythm. "Back on Forth" follows, a joyless mid-tempo track where Suchan chokes back lyrics like "We can go back and forth on this one/ Always in denial/ About a president evidently cheating/ Through that awful smile", sounding not only smug, but clumsy.
So here's my suggestion: Listen to Hard Times Are in Fashion in reverse. If you want to hear the record Koufax claim to be making, you'll hear it most in closing track "Colour Us Canadian", and much more in the album's second half than in its opening songs. "Canadian" opens on a sassy piano strut with only a few squaks of single-note guitar, and somehow pulls off the sweeping faux-string keyboards in the chorus without sounding cliched. Suchan's words hint towards Americans lying about their background when traveling abroad to avoid criticism and just try to fit in ("We never bothered to learn anyone else's language...We heard their jokes, and we wanted in"). 70s pop-prog it isn't, but it has one foot firmly in the unhip past and shows personal, relatable insight in its lyrics.
The galloping drums on the penultimate track, "Her Laughter", are far more kinetic than Hard Times' opener, and "A Sad Man's Face" is another stubbornly catchy piano-driven number. "Steven James" crams two or three of the album's best hooks into one song, and Suchan hits upon a charm here that overcomes his range (either cooing or yelping, and mostly the latter).
The following batch of songs-- the woozy march of "Trouble will Find You" or the strum-happy "Five Years of Madness"-- are fine, inoffensive songs, but are stingier with the swagger or melody. "Get Us Sober" switches rhythms and instruments so many times, it seems adrift in it's middling tempo. "Blind Faith", however, is a well-paced, confident ballad with surprising restraint, given the youthful exuberance on the rest of Hard Times. Its lyrics dip back into shallow political perspective ("The mothers want and need to know/why and where their sons must go"), but the performance is strong enough to let it slide. "Isabelle"... well, "Isabelle" would make a great closer. Forget those two closing (er, opening) tracks, albums are too long these days anyways. Let that familiar pedal steel guitar finish a record that appropriates the spirit, if not the craft, of some oft-ignored giants.
