Times New Viking - Born Again Revisited

Times New Viking may joke that their fourth effort boasts “25% higher fidelity”, but they’re fooling no one: the set is slathered in fuzz and tape hiss, as ever. Its stripped-down racket has the same dazzling quality as hot afternoon sun – you'll marvel at its brilliance, but too much of it can overpower. Dissonance has become as integral to the trio's sonic identity as their exuberant boy-girl back-and-forth and buried indie-pop hooks, but there’s real development here, as the band’s Flying Nun fetish blossoms into Clean-worship with beetling keys, rushing guitars and welcome temporal shifts. Overall, listening to Born Again Revisited provokes a sense of hard-won joy, like pulling away heaps of corrugated iron to find your loved ones alive beneath the rubble. Speculation about what they could do with better production values is missing the point. Joking aside, Times New Viking are wise to the fact that without noise, there’s nothing.