This is exactly the Les Savy Fav album I wanted to hear; or at least, Root for Ruin is exactly the disc I was waiting for back in 2007 when Let’s Stay Friends dropped. That’s not to say Friends was a total failure, just not what I was expecting. Now that I’ve gotten on board with steps forward taken by tracks like “Pots & Pans,” “What Wolves Do,” and “Raging in the Plague Age,” Root for Ruin’s otherwise encouraging return to form reads a little lackluster. When bands put out an album like Go Forth, you just have to accept that there’s a pretty good chance of that being their pinnacle. More than quantity of releases or the quality of the comeback, I waited the better part (worse part) of a decade for what turned out to be mostly a compromise. Would I have been pissed if I got twelve tracks of yowling over a drum machine? Yes, probably, but at least I would have respected the balls. Mostly, Friends bothered me for the same reason that Broken Bells’ debut bothered me. Like Mercer on that album, Les Savy Fav dipped their toes into a pool of bottomless potential but just couldn’t push off quite far enough from the comfortable shores of refracted former glory. So to the boys who used to be found “pissing in the sink sink sink, too drunk to find the head,” I say shit or get off the pot.
The best thing about Root for Ruin is the statement it makes. Tim Harrington’s greatness runs pretty parallel to Stephen Malkmus just in less of an understated way. I’ve certainly seen shows with instrument-less front men that make me wonder what the bands see in them. You can’t find a guy who can sing and play guitar? But then you take a guy like Harrington with his legacy of uncharted on stage/in crowd debauchery that it makes you wonder why all bands don’t have an unencumbered singer. Even regardless of live shows, Harrington’s vocals command attention. Ruin finds Harrington out to prove that, thinning hair or not, solid chops are forever.
The boys aren’t as excitingly rough around the edges as they used to be, and the transformation of sound has a lot to do with Andrew Reuland adding his second guitar before Friends. The funny thing about this album is that, despite the pointedly satirical “Sleepless in Silverlake,” Ruin sounds more like a California or Seattle record than New York. Nobody can listen to Go Forth or Inches and tell me what this band needed was a second guitar. With hooks like “Reprobate’s Resumé” or “We’ll Make a Lover of You,” it’s pretty clear that Seth Jabour’s guitar work didn’t really need any help. That just makes it all the more impressive that this now-five-piece makes it work without abandoning the exciting hooks that brought them this far. The production from Chris Zane, as was the case on his work with The Walkmen, hones the angular screeching guitar riffs into more refined syncopation with dazzling dimension. I guess it depends on whether you prefer the Fugazi or Sunny Day Real Estate influences that account for a great deal of this band’s music, because the ratio has certainly shifted in the Sunny Day direction.
So less exciting, yes, but Ruin is just as solid and consistent as any LP they’ve thrown down. The sound has certainly matured, but Harrington is as bawdy and salacious as ever. Thankfully, he pulls it off a lot more naturally (read: less creepily) than the aging glam rockers of the world. “Appetites” serves as the thesis for the album, and I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about food. The tracks on this one are pretty much exclusively about the inevitable ultimate destruction of the individual man as a microcosm of society at large, oh, and getting laid a lot before it all unwinds. It’s certainly not new territory for Harrington (or punk in general), but it becomes more poignant as time marches on. The first two tracks are Les Savy Fav tracks through and through, but once we hit “Let’s Get Out of Here,” the guitar layers really clinch the necessity of Reuland. Friends was a step out of the band’s comfort zone as well as mine. The good news is Root for Ruin isn’t Les Savy Fav returning to form with tails between their legs so much as it is a victory lap.
Track List:
1. Appetites
2. Dirty Knails
3. Sleepless in Silverlake
4. Let’s Get Out of Here
5. Lips ‘n’ Stuff
6. Poltergeist
7. High and Unhinged
8. Excess Energies
9. Dear Crutches
10. Calm Down
11. Clear Spirits
