That racket. It is what we talk about when we talk about Times New Viking: the bullhorn shouts, the buzzsaw guitars, the Keith Moon-meets-caveman drums. Times New Viking write killer punk rock with a bent towards Kiwi pop, but the thick layer of scum that envelopes Times New Viking's otherwise taut tunage is still their signature sound. Of course, it's that very racket that keeps a lot of folks away from Times New Viking. Their records jump out of earbuds, all but eradicate thought in slightly bigger headphones, and keep the cats away on the turntable. Unlike, say, Sonic Youth, who'll kick up the scuzz when the time is right, TNV tend to just let it ride, and once you've spent enough time with these kids way the hell out in the red, it's a little hard to imagine their music living anywhere else.
Here we have Stay Awake, a five-track EP that follows, almost to the year, 2008's stellar Rip It Off. The songs on Rip It Off were, as ever, great, but more than the two records that preceded it, the album's dry, fat-production aesthetic seemed even more assured, more consistent, and-- again, as much as can be expected from a three-piece punk band with the will to sound this distorted -- more nuanced. Levels of scuzz rose and fell with the instruments, the occasional clean-sounding element was introduced into the mix, and for the first time, what they made felt more like a proper front-to-back record than a bunch of ripchord jams played inside a dishwasher. Stay Awake sees our Vikings moving forward on that path-- if you'd told me they were from the same sessions, I'd have believed you.
Stay Awake's neither a coda nor a collection of cast-offs or curios. In just over 10 minutes, the EP not only lays out five fresh TNV cuts worthy of any of their LPs, but throws a whole lot more of that "nuance" business all over the place. The dirt's still very much under this band's fingernails, of course, but if whatever they do with production seemed intentional-- rather than a product of necessity, which it clearly isn't for a band on Matador-- it most certainly does now. The blanket of fuzz is just slightly more arid than the last time out, and far less encompassing, letting in a little room between the instruments and largely forgoing the pastiche of previous records for more sonic dynamism within the songs themselves. Hell, you might even pick out a lyric or two.
Oh, god, and the songs. If "Faces on Fire" and "(My Head)" from Rip It Off didn't have you convinced that these kids know their way around a hook, peep "Pagan Eyes", a Clean-like stomper rife with organ bleats and an actual shout-along chorus. And when some of the squall dies off at the end of "Pagan Eyes" and you hear Beth Murphy singing-- even if you still can't quite make out everything she's saying-- you quickly realize these folks know precisely what they're up to. Opener "Call & Respond" veers a little close to the first couple tracks on Present the Paisley Reich and the terrific tumult of "Hate Hate Hate" doesn't last long enough to quite get one off, so the big prize goes to "No Sympathy". Opening with a quick shot of a klezmer-y sample-- uncredited, it would seem-- the track burns slowly, rolling on into near-epic length as Beth Murphy gives perhaps her most affecting (yes, affecting!) vocal performance to date. Stay Awake plays itself out in high style on bright young punker "Sick & Tyred", which finds Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy matching shouts as Jared Phillips' guitar reaches fever pitch. And then, when it squeals to a close, well, then you turn it over and play it again. You've still gotta get through all that fuzz to find the songs underneath, you know. A bit of advice? Don't fight it, feel it.
