Les Savy Fav: Let's Stay Friends : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Let's stay friends is the first album of new songs in six years from indie-rock madcaps Les Savy Fav, yet it sounds like a band that's just hitting a peak. These Brooklyn-via-Providence, Rhode Island, dudes veer between art-punk guitar and disco drums, managing to fuse Fugazi circa In on the Kill Taker with Chic circa Risque. They built their legend as a furious live band, thanks largely to Tim Harrington's human-tornado energy; with his grizzly beard and Falstaffian bulk, he can dance all over a crowd's heads while making them shout along with verse like "Botoxed in bobby socks! Cold as ice! All the boys were like white on rice!" He doesn't disappoint here, with werewolf howls and party chants, plunging through political turmoil with his usual humor, especially in "Scotchguard the Credit Card," with its Hallmark-ready chorus, "You're goddamn right I resent the rent!" But when he pleads, "Won't somebody meet me in the present tense?" you know he won't suffer alone.