"B-but where are my extras? My rare and unreleased tracks, demos, B-sides, live performances, videos, and valuable ephemera?" I hear your cries, and I feel your pain. If you need consolation, however, try putting on the Inches DVD-- you know, the one you watched half of once?-- to reaffirm your devotion. 3/5, Les Savy Fav's debut album, has been reissued for the oldest and dullest of reasons: It up and went out of print.
The new art is a clever facsimile of the original vinyl that actually came packaged inside three shower caps (which was actually a terrible idea if you ever planned to listen to it). Your legacy is not at the forefront of your mind when you're wrapping your first record in bath gear, and listening back to 3/5 only makes this clearer. "Teen Anthem" is not quite as advertised, and the band's original two-guitar setup made a noise that was convincing, if not so discernible from the other noise of the time. "Cut It Out" shows singer Tim Harrington's ability for turning nearly any innocuous couplet into a come-on or a manifesto (I'd long misheard a lyric from "Pluto" as, "Every song's a sex commercial." If only that were true: I couldn't be more concise than that.) Despite Harrington-brand non sequiturs, "J'Taime" is the album's real anthem, though nearly any lyric would sound that way over that track's cutting sobriety. In between, there's a non-stop saturation of jagged guitars that often lags without the dynamics of the band's later work. The record's lost none of its bite or charm-- and I've always appreciated of the vicious rhythms of "Cut It Out" or "Scouts Honor"-- but it's still a long way from the confidence in their songs and in the studio exhibited on Go Forth, or the bold Inches compilation.
I get all moist in the face reading the list of comrades in the "Chorus" section of the faithfully reprinted liner notes-- the Make-Up, Brainiac, Trans Am-- but the Fav were still playing catch-up at this point, not quite redefining their influences like they would from the Emor EP onward. While LSF managed to cram more then enough mania, muscle, sexual frustration, and French-speaking people into their record to instantly assert themselves as a cut above the rest, 3/5 is outshined by each of the band's subsequent releases. It's a shame that a merely great record gets dusted by a band that improved with every step, but there you have it. There's just a little more punk here than personality, the twin-guitar crunch overcrowding Harrington's delivery and the band's more distinctive corners. A pre-DFA James Murphy recorded the album, but the reissue sounds as unvarnished as it ever did. 3/5 does its best to capture the raucousness of their live show, but Les Savy Fav records only got really interesting once they realized they didn't have to. 3/5 is a document of the undocumentable; coming up short was just inevitable.
Tim Harrington's behavior at shows has become so consistently unpredictable that all fans must trade anecdotes and all reviewers feel inclined to include their favorites. But back then, they were playing to small audiences, and those audiences weren't into moving. I've always thought Harrington's extremism was nothing but inclusive in spirit, but would that reckless shtick have developed if most backs weren't turned? Would Les Savy Fav have pushed themselves so hard in concert if digital pictures and smoke-blowing live reports were showing up on a dozen blogs the following day? And would they have pushed themselves in the studio in the same way, or rested on their laurels, as they have now that everyone knows about which curly hairs your face might get rubbed in if you're too close to the front of a Savy Fav show?
Pitchfork writer "Chip" Chanko wasn't misled in his enthusiasm when this was originally handed an 8.2. However, I knock it back a few tenths for how it measures up to the rest of the catalog now, and maybe a couple more for a lack of extras-- an oversight that's hard to complain about considering this was seriously out of print. Don't get me wrong: Every savvy Fan should own this, should have "J'Taime" and "Blackouts" mentally marked for their own internal best-of comps, and should know just what 1970s omni-hit they're quoting in the beginning of "Cut It Out". These details are so essential that you can take them for granted, just assuming the record's on your hard drive and moving on. Some extras would have been rad, yeah, but there's no need to see the naked baby pics when these guys, now full-grown, are still wearing tin foil hats and putting cucumbers in their Speedos. This record-- a sweet souvenir from the last word-of-mouth band-- is just sweetly awkward enough as it is.
