In 2006 I mistakenly got into two albums that ended up being important. One was Thom Yorke's The Eraser and the other was The Format's Dog Problems. Ultimately, Yorke's album gave me a new understanding and appreciation of Radiohead's catalogue and established something of a long-term relationship between the two of us. The Format album gave me six days of unrestrained joy, followed quickly by a desire to never see the record again.
Dog Problems was, on the surface, the perfect album. To my ear, it was a more pumped up Spinto Band (which was, at the time, a good thing). You spend a lot of time looking for something this good and when you find it, you search for "The Format" in your itunes and then click on the symbol that looks like a hurricane and make those tracks repeat into infinity.
Or at least until Sunday. After pummelling my ears with "She Doesn't Get It" and even name-checking The Format in a job interview that week with an interviewer who expressed love for the band, I was done. I literally never wanted to hear any of the songs again. And maybe The Format agreed. They broke up last year.
But the man with the mercurial and heart-broken voice who sang their songs, wasn't done. He started a new band called Fun (I have my thoughts on the name and mostly they are negative). Their first session together as a band yielded the following song, "Benson Hedges." The Format comparisons are, perhaps, too obvious. The sound is different, very slightly. It shows promise during some of its more driving moments. A proper record is due out in February but until then, you can spin this demo until it wears out. You have six days.
Listen :: Fun - Benson Hedges
No comments:
Post a Comment