On today's mix...
Times New Viking - Rip It Off (2008)
Man Man - Rabbit Habits (2008)

Times New Viking and Man Man are both love-or-hate bands straddling comic extremes, and both are indicative of the impossibly wide range of music indie can encompass.

The obvious catch of Times New Viking is the sound quality: Rip It Off sounds like it was fan-recorded outside the band's garage on a cassette deck and left in the car over a hot summer before being handed over to the good people at Matador... who dropped it in the pool. It's excessive enough to be their gimmick; as a reference point, keep in mind that this is the same label that produced Cat Power's The Greatest. Thankfully, Times New Viking have the talent and the energy to make it work, creating a quick, poppy record. Rip It Off's 16 tracks fly by in a mere thirty minutes, and as a result, it's a blast, though something of an immemorable one. Times New Viking aren't distinctive enough to rise above the noise all the time, but they're fun enough to make the feedback worth sifting through.

Man Man, meanwhile, easily have one of the most distinctive sounds in all of indie rock. The Brooklyn outfit's third album Rabbit Habits sounds something like Tom Waits meeting up in the recording studio with Danny Elfman and a pack of banshees that just escaped from the circus--where, presumably, they'd been trained to play in the house band. Opener "Mister Jung Stuffed" gets this halloween beach party started right, full of energy and featuring backing vocals that could be ripped from the Beetlejuice cartoon. Lead singer Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner) growls through the album's heartbreak, his frightening intensity merging with vulnerability, and he's one of the band's signature assets, though he's far from the only one. The lyrics here are always inventive, full of graphic imagery and sly wit, referencing Aerosmith and David Lee Roth as they blast out song after song that blows those bloated legacies out of the water.

There's not a song on here not to love, and it all climaxes with the epic pay-off "Poor Jackie", the type of song you can tell they've been cautiously restraining themselves from the whole time. Providing the album's catchiest, simplest hook and never settling anywhere too long, it's the album's most fascinating song. Closer "Whalebones", then, provides satisfying dénouement--something you rarely find on any album--and proves, along with the title track and "Doo Right", that they can do the slower songs just as well without sacrificing a thing. Many complain that Man Man recorded material hardly does justice their live act--I was upset to have missed their early show at this year's Coachella--but honestly, I can't imagine the music getting much better than this.

Rip It Off: 7/10
Rabbit Habits: 10/10