Les Savy – Oui, LSF Review

Fourteen years is a long while to be out of the recording studio. Les Savy Fav has likely been in, dipping their hands in the now murky waters of their past in the fourteen-year interval between their previous album and this, Oui, LSF. Yes, they are back. Yes, it has been well over a decade since anyone truly heard from them. They shuffled back into the public eye with a Primavera piece and the fires of creativity soon burned all too bright. Our need to compartmentalise the creative flair into something consumable is here yet again and their latest record, the sixth of a long-running career, is here. Listen to those electronic pangs which open Guzzle Blood. What a way to announce yourselves. The alarms are whirring, the Les Savy collective is back with booming, tense qualities. They feel as out-there and reliant on the wild patterns of their buried vocal periods as The Dandy Warhols on their latest release. 

Bring the tempo to a higher beat per minute and you have Hey, Mickey! by Baby Tate forming the drums. But with the usual Les Savy Fav flair the glamour of Limo Scene is discarded for fogged-up windows and harsh guitar work. Connor O’Malley is outside the window with Les Savy Fav behind him, roaring at the rich and directing them towards terror. Oui, LSF is a quality record more because its consistent form gives those high points like the roaring beauties hidden away on Legendary Tippers a chance to grow. Yet pieces like Dawn Patrol as unhinged and off-kilter as they sound adopt an echoed vocal style Hobo Johnson would be stunned at. He would shake his fists in triumph if he had the qualities of this middle-of-the-road Les Savy Fav turn, filled with sleek guitar work and a dominant percussion force which keeps the track, and larger parts of the album, together.  

Les Savy Fav may be one of the few artists still working away and making use of interludes and intermissions. Instrumental sparks on Racing Bees serve a purpose in understanding tempo and tone, slowing the pace before the heartbreak attempt on Don’t Mind Me. It does work, an effective and vocable performance is found within, and it is frankly Warren Ellis in its style, the high pitches hit perfectly and are paired with those interjections of piano and desperate prayers. Quite remarkable, to say the least. Oi! Division does well to toxify the need to network as they lash out at those who must connect with others to get through the day. Oui, LSF is an isolated listener’s dream. They rail against the powers which bring up those needs and wants of life and reject them through exceptional, punk-tinged instrumentals.  

Album closer World Got Great has it nailed down. Stuck in traffic and too busy to create or even figure out a plan comes an inevitably scathing understanding of the world around us. Les Savy Fav hope we take at least a bit of responsibility. Inaction is an action after all and what sort of action is eating pesto pasta out of a mixing bowl in the early hours of a Tuesday morning? The highs of music journalism are brought ever higher by the experience in hand with Les Savy Fav. Press on with this soundtracking your day and reap the spoils of a life filled with the excesses of irrelevancy. We do not know what we can do for ourselves, and Les Savy Fav agree, but immediately reroutes the inability to decide towards a desire to act. Oui, LSF is a wonderful piece with more than enough life in it to take on those heady messages of world troubles.