If there were two bands that didn’t really sound like they gave a shit about what anyone thought last year, they were Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot. From their unabashedly strange names to their respective debuts, it was clear both groups were not looking to make good impressions so much as they were to make good music. And that was what was why both those records held up. Because even though lord knows I have been through more than my fair share of love-hate cycles with Vampire Weekend, it was clear that those cycles were a product of me, not the band. It seeped through on their record (as well as on Ra Ra Riot’s debut, The Rhumb Line) that they didn’t really care what I thought, because they enjoyed making the music they were making. That attitude belied a lot of maturity in both of those bands, maturity that we usually don’t see on most groups’ debuts.
Which is why it’s extra disappointing that there is something so awfully juvenile about LP, the debut record from Discovery, a band made up of Vampire Weekend keyboardist and producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miles. On LP, Batmanglij and Miles are, rather than merging the sounds of their respective bands (which would have been intriguing), settle instead for trying to evoke a French 80s house/dance inspired atmosphere, completely removed from the sounds of both of their main projects. It’s an impulse I can understand; the point of side projects is to explore other impulses. But LP is too academic. It’s not an exploration of impulses, but rather of a studied craft. And there really isn’t enough room to fit everything about French house into one album, which makes LP sound pretty messy, at times. The crammed synthesizers in “Osaka Loop Line” sound unnatural. Refusing to settle into one, Batmanglij instead offers a schizophrenic assortment of patches, in what seems to be a desperate effort to cram all the “right sounds” into one song.
This feeling that Discovery are really out to impress their listeners (and the critics of the world) permeates the entire record – lyrics as well as music. Their injection of last-generation terminology – “when I met you at the discotheque” – seems less genuine when you take into account that, just four songs prior, Miles was complaining that “every text that I get from you is so, so serious.” This band may wish they were born in the 70s and grew up side by side with house music, but they weren’t, and they didn’t. They’ve clearly listened to a lot of house music, and they clearly have studied how to make house music. But it’s not their scene. And unfortunately, we know it’s not their scene, because they’re both in other, better bands to which they are much better suited.
Okay, so what should LP have been? For starters, Discovery should have utilized Batmanglij’s skill as an arranger to make something that, like Vampire Weekend, we hadn’t heard done and done better fifteen before, and they should have left the melody craft and vocal duties in Miles’s more capable hands. I mean, this stuff isn’t even catchy. No hooks, no memorable, infectious melodies, until the album’s saving grace and penultimate track, “It’s Not My Fault (It’s My Fault)”, which is a lyrical throwaway anyhow. The choruses are insipid, the verses blunt, and everything has too much Auto Tune. Still, I can well see LP becoming the anthem of the summer for many simply because of the personnel involved, but I’d recommend to our readership look elsewhere.
2.8 / 10.0
