Even now, amidst this international shitstorm of laptop-meets-okay-musician circle jerks, the Weilheim, Germany supergroups-- The Notwist, Ms. John Soda, Lali Puna-- have maintained fairly unique personalities. Let's oversimplify: The Notwist remains the camp's darkest shade, preoccupied with melancholy and perhaps the most electronically involved. Ms. John Soda straddles rock and pop equally, coaching chocolately sweet vocals and the camp's most peppermint hooks. By analogy, Lali Puna is to riffs what Ms. John Soda is to melodies-- this is Weilheim's face of rock, its most outwardly energetic outfit and the closest this town gets to sweaty basement shows and fucking shit up wholesale.
Which doesn't say much, as Lali Puna's idea of fucking shit up on their 2001 release Scary World Theory seemed to be, at worst, breaking into a building and rearranging the furniture. Still, at the time, the album's gruffest tracks offered the most aggressive sounds Weilheim's palatable pop spectrum had yet delivered. And then last year, Ms. John Soda released their heavily rock-oriented While Talking EP, which, though only marginally enjoyable, branched out into harder terrain. Now, with Faking the Books, Lali Puna snatch the Weilheim riffing crown back from Ms. John Soda-- and thankfully, even top their labelmates melodically.
After a pleasant but ultimately faceless title track opener, Lali Puna provide a double-shot of well-wrought rippers: "Call 1-800-FEAR" is the first, boasting a no-nonsense drive, tight instrumental harmonies and undistracting electronic loops that bolster the song's pulse. Atop it all floats bandleader Valerie Trebeljahr's underwater vocals, processed enough so as not to sound incongruous or (gasp!) bedroomy. "Micronomic", the album's second single, follows in similar temperament, and while not my favorite track on the album, speaks to Lali Puna's ability to cradle their listener gently in melody for one second, and to punch him in the face with a dirty riff in the next.
"B-Movie" and "Left Handed", however, are without a doubt the album's standouts, and maybe the best rock songs in Lali Puna's catalog. "B-Movie" pulls off the Kim Gordon sing/speak that Ms. John Soda attempted to lesser success last year: Trebeljahr just nails that been-there-done-that apathy which works so well with the song's contrasting manic rock groove and pointed bass pulse. The loud, guitar-heavy chorus of "Left Handed" steps further away from Weilheim's distinguished trademarks than the band's other material. Its roaring rock factor was a point of contention when it was released as the album's first single, but in the context of the album it doesn't seem out of place at all: The song sports similarly atonal-to-tonal lyric deliveries as "B-Movie", and remains anchored firmly by the nervous, high-pitched synth line that opens the song and rides it out to the end.
As for the rest of Faking the Books, it's pleasant, and hardly unrealized, but it falls just a bit too close to the IDM pop lark that takes up so much space on CD racks and FireWire drives. And on an album on which this band so beautifully exceeds itself with songs like "B-Movie" and "Grin and Bear", tracks like "Geography-5" and "People I Know", which are content to simply be pretty, are just further proof that the gimmick of pairing electronic and traditional rock instrumentation has lost its edge, and that the genre must now rely on stronger songwriting to succeed. That said, Faking the Books is a confident stride in the right direction, and proves that, even within the confines of a tired concept, a great hook still goes a long way.
