Just Hype?
XL have Tapes 'n Tapes, Tapes 'n Tapes have a lotta lotta hype, so lucky XL. But what's all the hype about? Well, I'm not entirely sure, the new single following the very talked about 'Insistor' is 'Cowbell', a song that takes Gogol Bordello and gives him a bit of an indie twist. Singing in a funny voice and being rampant and a little mad, kind of like a lot of bands around at the moment.
No, no, they're good an' all, it's just they're not that revolutionary, they're not Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or Arcade Fire; they haven't burst modern music open and turned it inside out. It's always hard to come to something so hyped and to try to understand it and divorce the phenomena from its source.
So, let's forget the hype... The KEXP Session B-sides 'Omaha' and 'Jakov's Suite' are rather cool to an extent, the former is Thom Yorke Eraser-like musically and a bit whiny in the vocal arena and the latter is a rocking traipse through an ill-conceived song structure that doesn't really deliver...
Overall they're quite Ok, but not all that... As they're getting it from everywhere else, they don't really need from me. I'll say this, a lot better than most, but not as good as some.